UC-NRLF 


B    3    Tib    5DS 


WHY  SOME  MEN  KILL 


OR 


Murder  Mysteries  Revealed 


George  A.  Thacher 


(y%-i/o4? 


WHY  SOME  MEN  KILL 


OR 


Murder  Mysteries  Revealed 


>»^. 


By 

George  A.  Thacher,  LL.B. 

President  Ore}ron  Prisoner's  Aid  Society.        Chairman  Committee  on  Juvenile 

Phases  of  Viee,  Portland  Vice  Commission  1012.      Chairman  Portland 

Prison   Commission   1913.        Author  "Feeblemindedne.«s   and 

Crime  in  Oregon,"  and  other  essays. 


Copyrighted  191P,  by  GEORGE  A.  THACHER 


SOCtM. 

I 


CONTKXTS 


HV65ltr 


Introduction  by  Dr.  Henry  H.  (loddard 1 

Chapter  1.,  The  Delinquent  Moron 5 

Chapter  II.,  Psychology  of  Confessions  of  Crime ir> 

Chapter  III..  Tlie  Murder  of  William  Booth  and  the  Convic- 
tion of  William  Branson  and  Mrs.  Booth 22 

Chapter     IV.,     WilHam     Biggin     Shows     Warden     Murphy 

Where  He  Concealed  the  Bevolver ',\2 

Chai)ter  V.,  Appeal  to  the  Public   for  the   Belease   of  Wil- 
liam Branson  and  Mrs.  Booth 40 

Chapter  VI.,  The  Murder  of  Mrs.  Daisy  Wehrman  and  Her 

Child    \:y 

Chapter  VII.,  The  Crime  Indicates  the  Criminal 'A) 

Chapter  VIII.,  The  Hair  Found   in   Mrs.   Wehrman's   Dead 

Hands    ,"(> 

Chapter  IX.,  John  Sierks'  Letters  About  the  Murder (iO 

Chapter  X.,  Confirmation  of  John  Sierks'  Confession  of  the 

Murder    (51 

Chapter  XI,,  Circumstantial  Evidence (58 

Supplement  to  Chapter  XL,  Containing  Judge  Pipes'  Brief  .  80 

Chapter  XII.,  Characteristics  of  Sadism 87 

Chapter  XIIL,  Personal  Character  of  Mr.  Pender 01 

Chapter  XIV.,  The  Sadistic  Murder  of  the  Hill  Family 04 

Chapter  XV.,  William  Biggins'  Confession 101 

Chapter  XVL,  The  Murder  of  Mary  Spina 112 

Chapter  XVIL,  Conclusion   115 


Press  of  Pacific  Coast  Rescue  and  Protective  Society 


599 


John  Ci.  H.  SitRKS.  :i  nicdiuni  grade 
moron,  who  confessed  to  killing  Mrs. 
Wehrman  and  her  child  in  Columbia 
County,  Oregon,  in  September,  1911,  antl 
then  repudiated  his  eDnl'essiou.  Chap- 
ters f.-i:i. 


John  Arthir  P);m)i;r,  who  was  wrong- 
fully convicted  of  the  murder  of  Mrs. 
Wehrman  and  her  child.  Mr.  Pender  has 
been  in  different  jails  and  the  peniten- 
tiary   since    September   15,    1911. 


PREFACE 

Some  years  ago  I  spent  a  Sunday  afternoon  at  the  Oregon 
State  Penitentiary  in  Salem  with  one  of  the  officers  of  the  insti- 
tution and  a  "trusty."  The  latter  was  a  veiy  intelligent  man, 
who  had  received  a  college  education.  The  conversation  turned 
to  the  question  of  mental  defect  among  the  inmates  of  the  insti- 
tution, who  at  that  time  numbered  about  340.  Neither  of  my 
companions  was  an  alienist  nor  a  psychologist  but  they  both 
knew  the  men  in  the  institution,  and  referring  to  the  prison 
records  they  named  about  70  men  who  were  (in  their  opinion) 
defective.  The  deputy  warden,  to  whom  I  mentioned  the  sub- 
ject of  our  conversation,  said,  "Yes,  and  I  could  add  some  to 
your  list." 

I  did  not  feel  confident  that  the  list  was  entirely  accurate, 
but  I  realized  that  eveiy  day  association  with  the  prisoners  prob- 
ably made  the  designation  of  defective  by  these  men  worthy  of 
thoughtful  consideration  at  least.  In  jotting  down  the  names  of 
these  prisoners  I  asked  what  offenses  they  had  committed.  In 
this  list  approximating  70  defective  prisoners  36  were  serving 
sentences  for  rape  and  of  the  36  there  were  13  who  had  raped 
their  own  daughters.  One  prisoner  was  serving  his  third  term 
for  this  same  offense.  Seventeen  of  these  prisoners  were  guilty 
of  the  offense  which  has  made  ancient  Sodom  a  byword  through 
the  centuries.  Six  of  these  men  had  committed  murder  and  all 
of  the  six  were  sex  perverts. 

Naturally  these  defective  beings  often  have  a  defective  moral 
sense.  My  observation  has  often  confirmed  that  fact.  Kraft- 
Ebing  remarks  that  "this  psychic  degeneration,  however,  has  a 
more  profound  pathological  foundation,  because  often  it  can  be 
referred  to  distinct  cerebro-pathologic  conditions,  and  often 
enough  is  associated  with  anatomic  signs  of  degeneration. 

"The  sexual  instinct  in  particular  is  very  frequently 
abnormal." 

It  is  my  purpose  in  presenting  the  facts  contained  in  this  short 
volume  to  bring  the  matter  before  the  people  of  the  nation,  or, 
at  least,  before  those  interested  in  criminal  problems  and  in 
social  service  work. 

I  also  wish  to  point  out  the  vagaries  of  the  average  trial  jury 
in  the  matter  of  so-called  circumstantial  evidence  in  cases  where 
some  terrible  crime  has  been  committed  and  where  the  evidence 


iv.  Preface 

criminal  acts,  in  spite  of  their  apparently  harmless  natures,  that 
I  submitted  the  material  to  Dr.  Heniy  H.  Goddard,  who  is  recog- 
nized as  the  foremost  authority  on  feeble-mindedness  in  the 
United  States.  Dr.  Goddard  was  for  years  director  of  research 
at  the  institution  for  the  feeble-minded  at  Vineland,  New  Jersey. 
At  the  present  time  he  is  director  of  the  Bureau  of  Juvenile 
Research  under  the  Ohio  Board  of  Administration  at  Columbus, 
Ohio.  Dr.  Goddard  has  published  several  books  on  the  subject: 
"Feeble-Mindedness,  Its  Causes  and  Consequences";  "The  Kal- 
likak  Family,"  an  account  of  feeble-minded  and  normal  heredity 
for  six  generations,  beginning  with  a  young  man  in  the  revolu- 
tionary army  who  had  a  child  by  a  feeble-minded  girl  and  who 
later  married  a  normal  woman  and  left  many  distinguished 
descendants.  Their  histories  are  compared  with  his  descendants 
by  the  feeble-minded  girl.  He  also  published  "The  Criminal 
Imbecile"  describing  three  feeble-minded  murderers,  one  of 
whom,  by  the  way,  is  serving  a  life  sentence  in  the  Oregon  Peni- 
tentiary at  Salem. 

Dr.  Goddard  writes: 
"My  Dear  Mr.  Thacher : 

"I  have  read  your  manuscript  very  carefully  and  have  been 
intensely  interested  in  it.  I  have  prepared  the  enclosed  intro- 
duction which,  if  it  is  of  any  service  to  you,  you  are  entirely 
welcome  to  use." 

The  introduction  follows. 

Portland,  Oregon,  March  15,  1919, 

George  A.  Thacher 


INTRODUCTION 

The  subject  matter  contained  in  this  book  constitutes  an 
important  human  document.  Society  has  had  three  stages  in 
its  attitude  toward  crime:  The  earUest  stage  was  that  of  re- 
venge, an  eye  for  an  eye  and  a  tooth  for  a  tooth — a  very  primi- 
tive view  seemingly  based  upon  the  conception  that  the  crime 
and  injury  were  atoned  for  if  the  perpetrator  was  made  to 
suffer  in  an  equal  degree.  While  there  are  still  some  people 
who  maintain  this  primitive  way  of  thinking  of  crime,  society 
has  long  since  passed  into  the  second  stage  which  was  the  idea 
of  punishment  in  order  to  deter  others  from  committing  similar 
crimes.  This  view  is  still  held  by  many  although  it  is  recognized 
by  the  most  thoughtful  that  both  in  theory  and  in  fact  this  is 
a  wrong  attitude.  It  has  been  proved  beyond  question  that  very 
few  if  any  of  our  crimes  are  of  such  character  that  the  fear  of 
punishment,  however  great,  would  deter  others  froin  committing 
them.  The  third  stage  which  has  grown  out  of  a  more  humani- 
tarian attitude  toward  our  fellowmen  is  expressed  in  the  dec- 
laration that  all  punishment  should  be  designed  to  "reform  the 
criminal."  And  we  have  been  busy,  in  the  most  enlightened 
centers  of  civiliation,  evolving  methods  for  such  reform.  Even 
the  names  of  penal  institutions  have  in  many  instances  been 
changed  from  prison  to  reformatory. 

We  are  now  beginning  to  glimpse  a  fourth  stage  which  is 
that  of  a  prevention.  In  other  words,  we  are  awakening  to  the 
fact  the  better  plan  is  not  to  wait  until  a  person  has  committed 
crime  and  then  reform  him,  but  to  anticipate  the  crime  and 
prevent  its  being  committed.  The  social  value  of  such  a  pro- 
cedure can  not  be  questioned.  The  possibility  of  success,  how- 
ever, has  been  questioned  and  is  still  denied  by  many  persons. 
It  is  still  declared  to  be  too  ideal  for  practical  purposes.  Never- 
theless it  is  a  proposition  that  all  must  admit  that  if  we  do  not 
strive  for  the  ideal  we  will  make  no  progress.  The  wise  pro- 
cedure is  obviously  to  keep  the  ideal  before  us  and  proceed  as 
fast  as  we  may  to  ascertain  what  are  the  necessary  conditions 
for  obtaining  the  ideal. 

Let  us  then  face  the  question  frankly — Can  crime  be  pre- 
vented? Logically  the  answer  is  clear.  It  can  if  we  can  deter- 
mine the  causes  and  then  remove  them.  We  therefore  come 
at  once  to  the  fundamental  question — ^What  are  the  causes  of 
Crime?     Some  will  answer  vaguely  "human  frailty,"  and  con- 


2  Introduction 

elude  at  once  that  human  frailty  is  a  thing  that  we  shall  always 
have,  and,  therefore,  we  shall  always  have  crime.  But  the 
conclusion  does  not  follow.  It  may  just  as  well  be  argued  that 
we  shall  always  have  physical  weakness  and  all  those  other  con- 
ditions which  result  in  sickness  and  disease.  Nevertheless,  pre- 
ventive medicine  has  already  accomplished  wonders  for  the 
comfort  and  welfare  of  the  human  family.  The  task  is  no  less 
hopeful  on  the  moral  side.  We  must  discover  those  people  who 
are  more  than  usual  subject  to  these  frailties  that  lead  to  crime, 
and  if  we  can  not  remove  the  frailties  we  can  at  least  care  for 
the  people  that  are  subject  to  them  so  that  they  will  not  be  likely 
to  fall  into  crime  as  the  result  of  their  weaknesses.  It  is  now 
proved  beyond  question  that  the  one  great  weakness  that  leads 
all  the  rest  put  together  is  weakness  of  mind. 

Mr.  Thacher  has  collected  in  this  book  facts  in  regard  to  a 
number  of  crimes  that  were  clearly  due  to  weakness  of  mind. 
He  has  thus  given  us  a  vast  amount  of  data  that  are  of  convinc- 
ing significance  to  all  those  persons  who  are  seeking  for  the 
facts  in  this  great  problem.  The  recognition  of  weakness  of 
mind  as  a  potent  cause  of  crime  may  be  considered  an  unex- 
pectedly pleasant  surprise.  Unexpected  certainly,  pleasant  be- 
cause we  see  at  once  how  easy  it  may  become  to  prevent  it.  It 
is  now  possible  to  detect  weakness  of  mind,  and  it  is  perfectly 
clear  to  those  who  are  familiar  with  the  necessary  methods,  that 
the  mental  weakness  of  every  one  of  the  persons  whom  Mr. 
Thacher  describes  as  the  real  criminals  in  these  cases  could  have 
been  determined  when  they  were  still  young  and  they  could 
have  been  cared  for  in  such  a  way  that  their  crimes  never  would 
have  happened. 

The  methods  of  measuring  intelligence  in  children  and  in 
adults  have  now  become  so  perfected  that  there  is  no  longer  any 
question  about  them  or  about  the  accuracy  of  the  results.  The 
United  States  Government  after  most  careful  and  rigid  exam- 
ination and  testing  has  set  its  stamp  of  approval  upon  the  meth- 
ods and  given  full  authority  for  their  use  in  examining  the  rela- 
tive mentality  of  men  in  the  United  States  Army. 

We  are  justly  proud  of  the  achievement  of  our  Expeditionary 
Force  in  France,  and  no  small  factor  in  the  efficiency  of  that 
force  is  to  be  found  in  the  fact  that  twelve  per  cent  of  the  drafted 
men  were  kept  at  home  on  account  of  their  low  intelligence,  with 
the  result  that  those  who  were  sent  over  seas  were  men  capable 


Introduction  S 

of  carrying  forward  the  purpose  of  the  army  with  a  high  degree 
of  efficiency.  Not  only  was  the  rank  and  file  selected  on  account 
of  superior  intelligence  but  the  officers  also  were  selected  on 
the  basis  of  intelligence  as  determined  by  these  tests.  With  this 
demonstration  before  us  we  can  not,  as  intelligent  citizens,  long 
delay  putting  into  practice  the  same  or  similar  tests  for  deter- 
mining the  mentality  of  all  school  children  and  youth,  and  then 
providing  the  necessarj'  care  in  some  form  or  other  which  shall 
prevent  those  of  low  mentality  from  ever  having  the  opportunity 
to  commit  crime.  This  clear  setting  forth  of  the  facts  showing 
that  these  atrocious,  but  all  too  common,  crimes  were  committed 
by  people  of  low  intelligence  is  of  the  highest  value,  and  should 
lead  promptly  to  putting  into  operation  the  necessary  machinery 
for  testing  out  the  population  and  determining  those  people  who 
are  of  too  low  mentality  to  be  trusted  to  manage  their  own 
affairs. 

It  is  unnecessary  to  discuss  here  the  methods  that  may  be 
used  to  care  for  these  people.  Suffice  to  say  that  their  care 
does  not  mean  imprisonment  but  merely  providing  an  environ- 
ment and  an  oversight  which  will  at  the  same  time  render  them 
harmless  and  make  them  happy  and  contented  in  their  sphere. 

Incidentally  the  facts  set  out  by  Mr.  Thacher  in  these  cases 
involve  another  question,  namely,  that  innocent  persons  are  suf- 
fering punishment  for  crimes  that  they  did  not  commit.  Some 
way  for  righting  the  wrong  should  of  course  be  found  as  soon 
as  possible.  The  fact  that  some  officials  entrusted  with  the 
administration  of  justice  may  have  made  mistakes  should  not 
be  allowed  to  interfere  with  the  righting  of  the  wrong  or  of 
introducing  better  and  surer  methods.  Nor  should  these  offi- 
cials feel  sensitive  that  their  errors  have  shown  up.  Undoubtedly 
similar  errors  have  occurred  the  world  over,  but  they  occurred 
through  lack  of  knowledge  which  was  not  possessed  by  any 
one.  In  other  words  we  did  the  best  we  could  in  view  of  the 
facts  at  hand.  Until  recently  we  have  known  almost  nothing 
about  mental  defect  or  its  relation  to  crime.  Now  that  that 
relation  is  discovered  it  is  the  part  of  wise  intelligence  and  broad- 
mindedness  to  utilize  that  knowledge  to  the  fullest  extent.  A 
way  should  be  found  of  righting  such  wrongs  as  it  is  still  pos- 
sible to  correct  and  of  inaugurating  methods  looking  toward  the 
prevention  of  such  errors  in  the  future. 

The  writer  of  this  introduction  has  no  means  of  verifying  Mr. 


4  Introduction 

Thacher's  statements  but  apparently  he  has  made  his  case  and 
it  is  certainly  true  from  the  standpoint  of  psychology;  and  in 
view  of  what  is  known  today  of  feeble-mindedness  his  arguments 
are  sound  and  his  conclusions  must  be  accepted.  His  methods 
of  formulating  a  working  hypothesis  for  determining  the  true 
criminal  on  the  basis  of  the  character  of  the  crime  is  entirely 
sound  and  has  been  worked  out  with  remarkable  insight,  and 
this  method  should  be  of  enormous  value  as  a  contribution  to 
criminal  procedure.  The  facts  and  explanations  of  these  crimes 
as  given  by  the  author  are  not  only  plausible  but  agree  perfectly 
with  the  vast  amount  of  data  that  has  been  collected  by  others 
in  other  places  in  connection  with  similar  crimes.  We  believe 
that  a  perusal  of  the  book  will  convince  any  unprejudiced  reader 
that  there  is  a  well-founded  hope  for  preventing  a  great  deal  of 
crime  and  that  it  is  well  worth  working  for. 

Henry  H.  Goddard. 


THE   HUMPHREY    BROTHERS 


These  two  brothers  were  high-grade  morons  and  they  lived  together  on  a  poor  little 
farm  which  they  cultivated.  They  were  unmarried  and  passed  as  somewhat  incapable  and 
liarmless  citizens,  though  the  family  physician  knew  them  to  be  weak-minded.  One  day  they 
went  to  the  home  of  a  middle-aged  single  woman,  who  lived  alone  near  Philomath,  Ore- 
gon, and  they  alternately  made  repeated  sexual  assaults  on  her  and  finally  murdered 
her.  They  then  carried  her  body  to  a  pond  near  by  to  conceal  it.  On  being  arrested,  they 
both  denied  the  crime,  but  made  damaging  admissions.  Later  they  confessed.  They 
wei-e  both  convicted  and  hanged.  They  exliil)ited  a  stolid  demeanor  on  the  gallows, 
which  the   newspaper  correspondents   described   as   an   indication   of   hardened    depravity. 


Chapter  I 
THE  DELINQUENT  MORON 

Tlic  word  Moron  is  a  recently  coined  addition  to  the  English 
hinguage,  and  is  not  to  be  found  in  any  but  the  latest  and  most 
up  to  date  dictionaries.  It  lacks  one  letter  of  spelling  Mormon, 
for  which  it  is  sometimes  mistaken  by  the  careless  reader. 
Moron  is  taken  from  the  Greek  word  meaning  a  grown- 
up person  who  is  a  fool — the  kind  of  person  who  was 
born  a  fool  and  for  whom,  therefore,  there  is  no  hope. 
The  Moron  has  considerable  cunning  but  no  foresight  and  the 
delinquent  moron  has  force  enough  to  try  to  get  what  he  wants 
but  not  sense  enough  to  foresee  consequences  of  forbidden  acts, 
and  so  he  becomes  a  criminal  fool,  if  a  born  fool  can  properly 
be  called  a  criminal.  Solomon  had  something  to  say  on  the 
subject  in  the  book  of  Proverbs,  but  his  bitter  comments  ex- 
pressed more  scorn  and  disgust  than  anger  at  the  wickedness  of 
fools. 

The  conduct  of  the  moron,  under  stress  of  temptation,  is 
strikingly  illustrated  in  the  case  of  Giovanni  Monaca,  and  many 
others. 

Pretty  seventeen-year-old  Mary  Spina  was  living  with  her 
father  and  mother  on  a  quiet  street  in  East  Portland  in  1918. 
Over  a  j^ear  before,  a  fellow  countryman  was  a  boarder  in  the 
family  for  seven  months.  His  name  was  Giovanni  Monaca  and 
he  was  thirty-two  years  old  and  had  been  a  day  laborer  of  the 
drifting  sort.  He  became  infatuated  with  Mary,  and  wanted  to 
marry  her,  but  her  family  refused  their  consent  and  Mary  would 
not  run  away  with  him  so  he  promptly  threatened  to  kill  her. 
Marj^'s  father  had  Giovanni  arrested  and  he  was  held  in  jail  one 
day  and  then  ordered  to  leave  town.  In  six  months  Giovanni 
returned  and  renewed  his  plea  and  his  threat  of  murder  as  an 
alternative,  and  was  again  arrested  and  again  ordered  to  leave 
town.  This  was  in  the  Spring  of  1918.  In  August  Giovanni 
returned  to  Portland  with  an  automatic  revolver  he  had  pur- 
chased in  Seattle  the  first  time  he  left  Portland  and  entered  the 
home  of  the  Spinas  at  night  through  a  window  and  went  to 
Mary's  room  and  shot  her  seven  times  as  she  lay  in  her  bed. 
Her  dead  body  looked  as  if  it  had  been  riddled  by  bullets  from 
every  direction.  When  Giovanni  was  arrested  after  running 
away  and  brought  back  and  questioned  he  said,  "I  was  crazy 


6  Why  Some  Men  Kill 

that  I  was  put  in  jail.  I  been  in  jail  twice  and  been  ordered  out 
twice  when  I  love  this  girl,  and  I  get  sore  for  this.  I  wanted  to 
marry  her  and  1  made  up  my  mind  if  she  going  to  marry  me 
it  is  all  right.    If  not,  I  kill  her." 

Q.     "Why  did  you  run  away?" 
"I  was  scared  of  the  police." 
"You  knew  what  you  had  done?" 
"Yes,  I  knew  what  I  had  done." 
"You  knew  it  was  wrong  to  do  that?" 
"Yes." 

"Don't  you  feel  badly  that  you  killed  this  girl?" 
"Yes,  but  I  am  satisfied  now  that  I  have." 

Very  similar  was  the  case  of  Fred  Tronson.  Miss  Emma 
Ulrick  was  an  attractive  and  efficient  stenographer  in  a  business 
office  in  Portland  in  1914.  Tronson,  aged  twenty-four,  was  ele- 
vator man  in  the  same  building  and  decided  that  he  wanted  to 
marry  Miss  Ulrick  and  gave  her  a  trifling  present  of  some  letter 
paper.  Miss  Ulrick  declined  the  proposal  of  marriage,  where- 
upon Tronson  threatened  to  kill  her.  Tronson  was  arrested  and 
lectured  by  the  police  judge  and  released  upon  his  promise  to  go 
away  and  go  to  work  and  forget  his  folly.  He  went  away  for  a 
few  weeks  and  brooded  over  the  matter  and  finally  bought  two 
revolvers  in  Vancouver  and  one  evening  followed  Miss  Ulrick 
home  and  into  the  house  where  he  fired  all  the  shots  in  one  of 
the  revolvers  at  her  as  she  tried  to  escape,  killing  her  almost  in 
the  presence  of  her  family.  Then,  much  as  Monaca  did,  he  threw 
away  the  revolvers  and  ran  away.  Monaca  got  as  far  as  Canada 
before  he  was  arrested,  but  Tronson  only  succeeded  in  getting 
one  hundred  miles  from  Portland,  before  the  police  caught  him. 
When  he  was  brought  back  to  Portland  he  said  to  the  District 
Attorney,  "Yes,  I  am  sorry  I  had  to  do  it;  I  acted  like  a  gentle- 
man.   I  had  given  her  one  present  already." 

He  said  he  bought  two  revolvers  and  loaded  them  both,  so 
that  if  one  failed  he  would  still  have  the  means  of  killing  Emma 
Ulrick.  Tronson  said  he  felt  satisfied,  in  doing  what  he  did,  but 
he  was  afraid  they  would  put  blood  hounds  on  his  trail.  At  his 
trial  his  confession  to  the  District  Attorney  was  read  in  evidence 
and  he  was  very  obviously  proud  of  the  story  as  a  literary  pro- 
duction in  which  he  had  the  principal  part.  He  leaned  over  and 
asked  the  minister  who  sat  by  his  side,  "Well,  what  do  j^ou 
think  of  it?" 


The  Delinquent  Moron  7 

When  Tronson  was  being  sentenced  to  prison  for  life  after 
his  conviction  he  acted  Uke  a  frightened  chiUI  who  was  being 
scokied  for  bad  conduct.  On  the  direct  question  being  asked 
him  by  the  District  Attorney,  he  admitted  that  he  had  no  right 
to  take  Emma  Llrick's  Hfe,  which  he  could  not  restore  to  her,  but 
said  that  lie  did  not  think  of  that  at  the  time  he  killed  her. 

At  Tronson's  trial  for  the  murder  of  Emma  Ulrick  I  secured 
the  consent  of  District  Attorney  Walter  H.  Evans  and  his  first 
assistant,  John  A.  Collier,  to  the  introduction  of  expert  testi- 
mony as  to  Fred  Tronson's  mental  weakness.  Mr.  Dan  Powers, 
Tronson's  lawyer,  placed  Miss  Grace  Lyman,  a  psychologist  from 
Leland  Stanford  University,  on  the  stand,  and  she  testified  that 
the  mental  test  showed  that  Tronson  had  a  mental  age  of  about 
nine  years. 

This  is  the  first  time  in  Oregon  criminal  practice  that  the 
testimony  of  a  psychologist  on  the  subject  of  feeble-mindedness 
has  been  admitted  in  a  murder  trial. 

A  full  account  of  this  case  wdth  Tronson's  confession  may  be 
found  in  Dr.  Henry  H.  Goddard's,  "The  Criminal  Imbecile." 

Tlic  same  year  in  New^  York  state,  Jean  Gianini  assassinated 
an  interesting  young  woman  in  the  most  brutal  fashion  and 
dragged  her  body  into  the  bushes  by  the  side  of  the  lonely  road 
where  he  had  persuaded  her  to  walk  wath  him. 

Expert  testimony  of  psychologists  was  admitted  at  the  trial 
to  show  the  murderer's  mental  capacity  and  with  the  following 
result : 

"We  find  the  defendant  in  this  case  not  guilty  as  charged;  we 
acquit  the  defendant  on  the  ground  of  criminal  imbecility." 

This  was  the  verdict  of  the  jury  in  Herkimer  County,  New 
York,  on  March  28,  1914,  in  the  case  of  Jean  Gianini  who  killed 
the  young  woman  who  had  the  misfortune  to  be  his  school 
teacher. 

Jean  Gianini  was  a  high  grade  defective  who  could  not  make 
any  progress  in  his  studies,  and  he  said  that  his  teacher  humili- 
ated him  in  school,  wliich  shows  that  he  had  brains  enough  to 
realize  that  he  was  a  failure  in  his  classes.  At  the  same  time  he 
was  apparently  attracted  by  his  teacher  because  he  had  fre- 
quently asked  her  to  go  with  him  to  visit  his  family.  She  finally 
consented  to  go  with  him  and  somewhere  on  the  road  he 
attacked  her,  whether  with  a  sexual  motive,  or  because  of  his 
"humiliation"  in  school,  will  never    be    proven.     He  admitted 


8  Why  Some  Men  Kill 

striking  her  with  a  wrench  three  times  and  then  hitting  her  with 
a  knife  several  times  (24  was  the  number,  one  blow  finally  reach- 
ing the  jugular  vein)  "to  be  sure  to  finish  her,"  Then  Jean 
dragged  her  body  aside  so  that  it  would  not  be  readily  discovered 
and  went  home.  The  next  day  after  breakfast  at  the  place  where 
he  was  employed,  he  went  to  work  for  a  short  time,  but  soon  quit 
work  and  went  to  the  village  where  he  was  picked  up  at  the  rail- 
road depot.  He  went  back  without  any  objection  and  on  being 
accused  of  the  murder  he  readily  confessed. 

He  had  started  to  leave  home  the  night  before  but  as  he 
missed  the  train  he  went  back  and  went  to  bed.  He  said  he  was 
as  happy  as  usual,  adding,  "I  did  not  think  anything  about  it  as 
I  thought  I  had  revenge." 

This  characteristic  murder  by  a  feeble-minded  man  is  de- 
scribed in  detail  together  with  the  evidence  at  the  trial  in  Henry 
H.  Goddard's  "Criminal  Imbecile."  The  murderer  was  held  to 
be  irresponsible  in  view  of  his  weak  mentality  as  pointed  out  by 
experts  on  the  witness  stand,  but  provision  was  made  for  his 
permanent  detention  in  an  institution  instead  of  sending  him  to 
the  electric  chair. 

In  both  of  these  last  two  unprovoked  murders  of  intelligent 
young  women,  who  had  every  possibility  of  useful  and  honorable 
careers,  the  immediate  cause  of  their  deaths  is  a  matter  deserv- 
ing consideration. 

There  was  so  much  of  the  "ego"  in  the  cosmos  of  both  of 
their  murderers  and  so  httle  abihty  to  foresee  consequences  that 
they  were  without  any  sense  of  their  personal  responsibility  to 
others. 

Dr.  Goddard  points  out  that  these  young  men  understood  per- 
fectly the  character  of  their  acts  as  shown  by  their  preparations 
and  the  actual  killing,  but  he  insists  that  these  feeble-minds  did 
not  realize  the  quahty  of  their  acts  or  the  inevitable  consequences 
to  anyone  (themselves  included)  of  taking  human  hfe.  That 
looking  ahead  and  foreseeing  results  calls  for  a  considerable 
abihty  in  abstract  reasoning  which  the  feeble-minds  do  not  pos- 
sess. They  never  get  beyond  the  childish  stage  of  wanting  things 
and  threatening  to  kill  if  denied. 

There  probably  never  lived  an  aggressive  small  boy  who  did 
not  fly  into  a  rage  and  threaten  to  kill  when  he  was  completely 
obstructed  in  his  desires.  His  moral  sense,  which  must  be  sus- 
tained by  his  ability  to  reason,  has  not  been  developed.    He  must 


The  Delinquent  Moron  9 

be  controlled  by  authority,  and  in  practically  all  cases  he  is  con- 
trolled by  the  kind,  but  decisive,  will  of  his  parents  until  his  own 
reason  supports  and  sustains  the  moral  teaching  he  has  received. 

About  1916  two  small  boys  under  twelve  years  of  age,  who 
had  been  as  completely  neglected  as  two  little  animals,  killed  a 
man  in  Idaho.  They  knew  the  nature  of  the  deed  and  carried 
it  out  by  shooting  a  rifle,  but  they  were  young  children  and  could 
not  realize  the  consequences  of  taking  human  life.  Their  horizon 
was  bounded  by  the  impelling  force  of  their  impulses  and  their 
lack  of  training  and  ability  to  reason  about  the  sanctity  of  life. 
These  children  were  not  convicted  of  murder,  for  the  irresponsi- 
bilitA'  of  the  child  was  recognized. 

In  the  grown  up  feeble-minds  this  same  lack  of  ability  to 
reason  about  the  consequences  of  criminal  conduct  is  the  most 
noticeable  characteristic.  Their  reasoning  powers  are  too  weak 
for  them  ever  to  learn  thoroughlj'^  and  as  a  guide  to  conduct  the 
value  of  ethical  teaching.  They  always  remain  creatures  of 
impulse  except  in  so  far  as  fear  controls  them.  At  the  same  time 
their  powers  of  perception  are  often  very  good  and  some  of  them 
have  unusual  mechanical  ability. 

In  1916  a  man  over  sixty  years  of  age,  serving  a  life  sentence 
for  murder  in  a  Michigan  prison,  was  pardoned  and  drifted  to 
the  Pacific  Coast.  He  had  been  in  prison  over  30  years.  I  saw 
him  every  day  for  months,  but  aside  from  a  vacant  eye,  a  marked 
pallor,  probably  due  to  long  confinement,  and  indications  of 
broken  health  there  was  no  stigmata  of  mental  weakness.  He 
carried  wood  for  the  fires  and  one  day  he  appeared  w^ith  a  sort 
of  harness  which  enabled  him  to  stagger  along  with  a  huge  arm- 
ful of  wood.  He  showed  the  same  delight  in  this  arrangement 
that  a  small  boy  would  manifest  in  overloading  a  wheelbarrow 
and  wasting  time  in  doing  it.  Then  he  showed  a  complete  inabil- 
ity to  reckon  his  wages  for  work  done,  and  would  become  angry 
when  it  was  pointed  out  that  there  was  a  debit  as  well  as  credit 
side  to  an  account.  He  was  obviously  sincere  in  claiming  that 
he  was  being  cheated  because  the  amount  which  he  owed  was 
deducted  from  the  amount  due  him.  His  capacity  for  handling 
an  abstraction  of  the  simplest  sort  was  lacking. 

On  several  occasions  he  called  in  a  man  who  had  befriended 
him  to  secure  fair  treatment.  This  friend  proved  to  be  an  ex- 
guard  from  the  Michigan  prison  where  this  man  had  been  con- 
fined. He  admitted  that  this  ex-prisoner  was  weak-minded  and 
said  that  he  was  very  quarrelsome    in    prison    and    was    often 


10  Why  Some  Men  Kill 

engaged  in  fights  with  other  prisoners.  I  asked  what  crime  this 
prisoner  had  committed  and  he  told  me  that  he  had  a  quarrel 
with  his  brother  and  cut  his  head  off  with  an  axe. 

This  ex-prisoner  had  only  a  child's  sense  of  humor  in  spite  of 
his  sixty  odd  years  of  experience.  He  finally  became  so  incensed 
because  he  thought  he  was  being  cheated  that  he  left  for  Cali- 
fornia. He  could  reckon  his  wages  but  he  rebelled  bitterly  at 
the  thought  of  being  compelled  to  pay  anything  out  of  his  wages, 
for  his  room  or  board.  His  mental  machinery  could  not  enter- 
tain or  adjust  the  two  sides  of  a  problem.  At  the  same  time  he 
apparently  had  moderate  inteUigence.  He  had  been  known  as  a 
bad  man,  but  his  old  prison  guard  knew  that  he  was  weak- 
minded  and  consequently  irresponsible. 

In  some  of  these  "aments"  all  the  instincts  are  weak  and  they 
drift  through  life  without  committing  any  crimes,  but  unable  to 
make  a  comfortable  living  because  they  are  unable  to  plan  and 
lack  persistence  and  the  will  to  be  industrious.  Intellectually 
they  are  very  much  like  an  unusually  intelligent  steer  or  horse. 
However,  in  many  of  these  defectives  the  reproductive  instinct  is 
strong  enough  to  keep  them  in  constant  trouble  and  lead  them 
into  criminal  conduct.  They  know  no  law  but  the  desire  for 
immediate  gratification.  Of  course  there  is  no  arbitrary  line 
between  the  feeble-mind  and  the  so-called  normal  person,  and 
naturally  what  are  known  as  the  border-zone  cases  develop  into 
the  worst  criminals,  as  we  call  them  in  popular  terms. 

A  young  man  by  the  name  of  Kemp  illustrates  the  border- 
zone  type.  He  assaulted  a  young  married  woman  whom  he  acci- 
dentlj'^  met  in  a  lonely  place  near  Portland  and  tore  every  strip 
of  clothing  from  her  body.  Becoming  enraged  at  her  resistance 
he  shot  her  through  the  body  and  then  forced  her  head  into  a 
pool  of  muddy  water.  But  at  the  moment  her  capacity  for  resist- 
ance ceased  he  became  remorseful  and  wrapped  her  in  some 
sacking  and  poured  some  whiskey  between  her  lips  and  placed 
her  unconscious  body  in  a  poor  shelter,  and  then  wrote  a  letter 
to  the  sheriff  telling  him  where  to  go  to  find  this  young  woman, 
and  took  the  trouble  to  go  to  the  central  postoffice  and  put  a 
special  delivery  stamp  on  the  letter.  The  sheriff  acted  promptly 
and  the  young  woman,  after  hovering  between  life  and  death 
for  days,  finally  made  a  complete  recovery. 

The  penalty  for  assault  with  intent  to  commit  rape  is  from 
one  to  ten  years'  imprisonment  in  Oregon;  but  Kemp  was  carried 


The  Dclinqncnl  Moron  11 

away  by  fear,  and,  after  wandering  in  the  woods  for  a  few  days 
eluding  pursuit,  finally  shot  and  killed  himself  with  the  revolver 
he  had  used  to  shoot  the  young  woman  who  had  resisted  his 
criminal  attempt.  Kemj)  showed  more  capacity  for  reflection 
and  abstract  reasoning  than  did  either  Jean  Gianini  or  Tronson, 
but  he  also  showed  the  same  complete  yielding  to  impulse  that 
they  did. 

To  people,  generally,  crime  is  a  horrid  manifestation  of 
wickedness  which  calls  for  sharp  and  swift  vengeance  on  the 
offender,  both  to  injure  him  because  he  has  injured  others,  and 
to  frighten  possible  or  prospective  criminals  from  doing  similar 
deeds.  That  is  popular  criminology  and  penology  reduced  to 
their  lowest  and  simplest  terms.  From  this  naturally  follows 
the  attempt  by  the  law-making  power  to  measure  the  amount  of 
punishment  or  vengeance  by  the  nature  of  the  offense.  * 

There  is  another  possible  method  which  would  involve  con- 
sidering the  intelligence,  the  character  and  training  of  the  of- 
fender in  order  to  determine  whether  or  not  he  is  a  fit  person 
(or  may  become  a  fit  person)  to  return  to  society  and  propagate 
his  kind. 

The  philosophy  of  the  latter  method  is  very  simple  and  goes 
back  to  first  principles.  Most  animals  are  gregarious  and  have 
certain  social  impulses  which  benefit  the  flock  or  herd,  but  man 
is  the  only  animal  who  has  a  conscious  moral  sense.  Man  has  a 
hand  with  a  thumb  opposing  the  fingers  so  that  he  can  grip  and 
handle  objects,  and  he  has  the  faculty  of  communicating  with 
his  fellows  by  spoken  (and  written)  language,  and  the  two  facul- 
ties have  slowly  and  painfully  led  him  to  material  achievement 
and  to  account  to  himself  (and  to  others)  for  his  acts.  That  is 
to  say  he  has  a  moral  sense  or  very  practical  reasons  for  know- 
ing that  certain  acts  are  right  and  certain  other  acts  are  wrong 
because  of  their  ultimate  consequences.  He  might  be  told  from 
infancy  to  old  age  that  certain  things  are  wrong  but  unless  he 
could  reason  it  out  and  know  it  as  a  personal,  never-to-be-forgot- 
ten fact  he  would  not  be  a  moral  creature,  or  what  we  call  a 
responsible  creature. 

This  is  the  eternal  burden  of  educating  the  young.  Even 
where  they  inherit  good  bodies  and  minds  and  come  of  families 


*  Note:  Article  1,  Section  16,  Constitution  of  Oregon — 
"Cruel  and  unusual  punishments  shall  not  be  inflicted, 
but  all  penalties  shall  be  proportioned  to  the  offense." 


12  Why  Some  Men  Kill 

who  possess  good  morals  and  good  habits,  it  is  a  commonplace 
that  boys  and  girls  violate  laws  and  morality  through  ignorance, 
lack  of  experience  and  lack  of  thought.  The  tendency  has  grown 
very  rapidly  in  recent  years  to  treat  minors,  not  as  criminals, 
but  as  young  and  immature  persons  whose  minds  have  not  been 
developed  to  the  point  of  foreseeing  the  ultimate  consequences  of 
their  acts. 

However  there  are  certain  persons  who,  through  bad  inheri- 
tance or  disease,  have  weak  and  defective  minds  and  who  never 
can  learn  to  reason  about  their  acts  so  as  to  foresee  the  ultimate 
consequences.  That  is  to  say  they  are  not  moral,  responsible 
creatures.  Experience  teaches  them  no  lessons  for  they  can't 
deal  much  in  abstractions,  and  while  they  may  have  a  parrot-like 
knowledge  of  right  and  wrong,  it  does  not  control  their  bad  or 
hurtful  tendencies.  They  can  perceive  the  difference  between 
right  and  wrong,  but  they  have  no  foundation  for  moral  char- 
acter because  their  minds  are  defective  and  weak.  In  other 
words  they  are  for  all  practical  purposes  as  much  the  creatures 
of  their  impulses  as  the  coyote  of  the  plains  or  the  grizzly  bear 
in  the  mountains.  Their  morality  is  much  like  the  ignorant  sav- 
age's abilitj"  to  count.  An  abstract  number  means  nothing  defi- 
nite to  a  savage,  and  the  abstraction  cannot  be  remembered  and 
applied  to  a  new  situation.  The  defective  moral  sense  of  the 
weak-minded  is  like  that  lack  of  mathematical  capacity-  and 
consequently  cannot  be  applied  to  new  situations  and  problems 
as  they  arise  in  the  defective's  life. 

That  is  equivalent  to  saying  that  the  defective  person  who 
has  impulses  or  tendencies  of  any  unusual  strength  is  practically 
certain  to  be  guilty  of  criminal  acts.  He  know^s  the  meaning  of 
no  law  and  is  capable  of  knowing  none.  His  outlook  is  the  crim- 
inal outlook  but  his  responsibility  is  nil. 

A  good  illustration  of  the  "aments"  criminal  outlook  appears 
in  Aaron,  a  young  man  of  25  years  who  began  his  delinquent 
record  in  the  juvenile  court  at  the  age  of  14  or  less.  Since  then 
he  has  gone  through  the  mills  of  justice  about  ten  times  and  at 
present  is  in  the  penitentiar3\  He  has  been  convicted  of  theft 
and  burglary  and  is  now  serving  a  sentence  for  receiving  stolen 
goods.  He  also  has  been  guilty  of  sex  offenses  against  Httle  girls. 
Physically  he  is  an  able-bodied  man  and  does  not  look  imbecile, 
but  the  psychological  test  gives  him  the  rating  of  a  7-year-old 
child. 


The  Delinquent  Moron  13 

Aaron  never  could  get  beyond  the  first  grade  in  school  and 
naturally  can  do  nothing  with  words  or  numbers.  From  the  police 
point  of  view  he  is  a  bad  young  man  and  could  be  led  into  any 
kind  of  crime  which  his  intelHgence  or  cunning  is  equal  to.  For 
ten  years  punishment  has  been  measured  out  to  him  according 
to  the  offenses  he  has  committed,  though  in  truth  he  is  not  a 
moral  creature. 

Naturally,  among  women,  weak  mentality  leads  to  their  ex- 
ploitation as  prostitutes — where  they  are  not  protected  by  cir- 
cumstances. The  lack  of  ability  to  foresee  ultimate  consequences, 
even  in  a  small  degree,  is  obviously  the  chief  explanation  for  the 
army  of  women  in  the  underworld.  The  extreme  youth  of  many 
of  these  novitiates  in  an  unhappy  life  explains  in  great  part  the 
lack  of  intellectual  development  or  capacity  to  reason  among 
those  who  are  not  actually  feeble-minded. 

There  is  no  sharp  line,  of  course,  between  the  feeble-minded 
and  the  so-called  "normal"  person,  and  the  greater  the  intelli- 
gence short  of  a  full  capacity  to  deal  in  abstractions  and  foresee 
consequences,  the  greater  the  danger  of  irresonsible  and  criminal 
conduct.  Special  defects  among  intelligent  persons  are  often 
causes  of  crime. 

There  are  a  great  many  men  and  women  of  the  underworld 
who  escape  the  technical  stigma  of  being  feeble-minded  who  are 
altogether  creatures  of  impulse  and  apparently  entirely  lacking 
in  self-control.  Where  their  impulses  or  instincts  are  very  strong 
they  are  especially  dangerous. 

The  high-grade  feeble-minded,  who  under  favorable  circum- 
stances can  earn  a  living,  are  very  apt  to  be  considered  as  respon- 
sible beings  and  treated  as  such.  For  thousands  of  years  they 
have  been  regarded  as  fools  whose  folly  w  as  wilful.  Solomon  in 
his  Proverbs  has  much  to  say  about  them.  He  refers  to  fools 
constantly  and  in  the  26th  chapter  of  the  Book  of  Proverbs  he 
sums  up  his  scathing  indictment.  There  are  tw^o  significant 
things  in  Solomon's  account  of  fools.  He  points  out  that  a  fool 
is  a  hopeless  creature — "As  a  dog  returneth  to  his  vomit;  so  a 
fool  returneth  to  his  folly."  He  also  differentiates  between  fools 
and  criminals — "The  great  God,  that  formed  all  things,  both  re- 
wardeth  the  fool,  and  rewardeth  transgressors." 

It  would  really  seem  as  if  the  world  had  suffered  enough  from 
feeble-minded  delinquents  to  recognize  their  characteristic 
traits.  There  is  one  particular  kind  of  weak-minded  creature 
who  has  considerable  facility  in  the  use  of  language  and  who 


14  Why  Some  Men  Kill 

aspires  to  be  a  politician  and  demands  a  politician's  reward  of 
"office,"  and  failing  in  that,  takes  a  feeble-minded  man's  revenge 
on  the  highest  official  he  can  reach.  President  Garfield  was  as- 
sassinated by  Guiteau,  who  wanted  to  be  appointed  an  ambassa- 
dor. It  was  recognized  at  the  time  of  Guiteau's  trial  for  murder 
that  he  was  not  fully  responsible,  but  there  was  no  proof  of  ji 
insanity  (vague  as  that  term  is).  On  the  other  hand  everything 
in  Guiteau's  life,  from  his  childish  schemes  for  making  a  living, 
his  lack  of  honesty,  his  complete  lack  of  sense  in  trying  to  adjust 
means  to  ends,  his  unrestrained  vanity  in  claiming  alliance  politi- 
cally with  the  Stalwarts  who  were  led  by  Roscoe  Conklin,  his 
request  for  an  ambassadorship,  his  excuse  of  compulsion  or 
necessity  in  killing  President  Garfield  (like  Tronson  who  killed 
the  girl  who  would  not  marry  him — "Yes,  I  am  sorry  I  had  to 
do  it,")  his  conduct  at  his  trial  for  murder,  and  finally  when  on 
the  gallows  he  read  his  doggerel  verse,  "I  am  going  to  my  Goddy 
in  the  sky,"  all  indicate  with  a  weight  of  cumulative  evidence 
not  to  be  denied  that  Guiteau  was  a  high-grade  feeble-mind,  or 
what  Solomon  called  a  fool. 

The  assassin  of  Carter  Harrison,  Mayor  of  Chicago,  was  an- 
other high-grade  feeble-mind  like  Guiteau,  who  felt  the  imperi- 
ous necessity  of  killing  the  Maj^or  because  the  Mayor  had  not 
given  him  what  he  wanted.  He  felt  perfectly  justified  in  doing 
what  he  did.  His  childish  mind  in  a  man's  world  could  come  to 
no  other  conclusion.    "I  am  sorry  I  had  to  do  it." 

This  is  the  nature  of  the  creatures  whose  crimes  are  described 
in  the  following  chapters.  They  know  in  feeble-minded  fashion 
the  difference  between  right  and  wrong  but  the  realization  does 
not  "trickle"  in  until  after  the  event.  Their  impulses  are  the  only 
things  which  control  them. 

There  is,  of  course,  the  further  question  of  psychoses  and 
aberrations  among  the  weak-minded  as  predisposing  causes  of 
criminal  conduct.  There  is  no  question  but  what  they  exist,  and 
in  fact  very  careful  observers  consider  that  the  mental  and  nerv- 
ous weaklings  are  very  apt  to  be  afflicted  with  degenerative 
affections  which  occasionally  lead  the  subject  to  commit  some  of 
the  most  terrible  crimes  known  to  the  human  race,  such  as 
sadistic  murder,  as  well  as  lesser  crimes.  This  is  perfectly  logical 
and  observation  confirms  the  conclusion. 


Chapter  II. 
PSYCHOLOGY  OF  CONFESSIONS  OF  CRIME 

To  the  more  or  less  morbid  creature  whom  we  designate  as 
criminal  the  desire  for  gratification  of  hmiian  impulses  and  for 
some  social  recognition  is  very  strong. 

I  have  listened  to  the  stories  of  offenders  who  have  commit- 
ted various  crimes  ranging  from  forgery  and  obtaining  money 
by  false  pretenses  and  burglary  to  perverted  sexual  offenses  and 
murder,  and  the  burden  of  the  story  is  almost  invariably  the 
same.  It  seems  to  be  one  of  the  absolute  needs  of  human  beings 
to  talk  about  personal  experiences  and  attempts  at  achievement. 
A  man  who  was  indicted  for  an  assault  on  a  child  had  a  long 
story  about  his  unsuccessful  career  and  broken  family  and  his 
fondness  for  children.  He  denied  the  offense  and  condemned 
it  in  unmeasured  terms  but  went  on  to  explain  the  circum- 
stances which  he  said  had  deceived  the  witnesses.  His  explan- 
ations and  admissions  proved  his  guilt  beyond  a  reasonable 
doubt,  but  not  content  with  indirectly  damning  himself  he  then 
began  to  ask  questions  about  the  length  of  sentence  imposed 
for  this  particular  crime.  He  did  not  w^ant  to  admit  that  he 
was  a  criminal  but  his  point  of  view  was  his  experience  and 
he  could  not  let  it  alone.  If  his  experience  had  not  been  a 
guilty  one  he  would  have  had  verj'^  little  to  say.  He  would 
have  asserted  his  innocence  and  been  contemptuous  perhaps 
about  the  charges,  but  that  would  have  closed  the  tale. 

The  disposition  of  men  who  are  guilty  of  offenses  to  talk 
about  them  and  make  partial  admissions  which  lead  up  to  the 
criminal  act  but  deny  the  culminating  or  actual  performance 
is  verj^  common.  A  pervert  who  had  made  a  public  nuisance 
of  himself  prefaced  his  statement  by  saying  that  he  knew  that 
men  sometimes  did  this  thing  but  that  he  was  a  virtuous  citi- 
zen, and  that  he  was  getting  old,  and  that  he  had  too  great  a 
respect  for  his  fellow^s  to  do  anything  of  the  sort.  He  repeated 
several  times  that  he  knew  this  thing  was  done  but  that  he  did 
not  do  it.  He  did  not  know  that  he  was  confessing  his  guilt, 
but  the  court  knew  and  sent  him  to  prison. 

It  has  been  said  that  a  liar  needs  a  long  memory,  but  the  fact 
is  that  his  memory  is  his  undoing  as  soon  as  he  attemj)ts  to 
weave  a  different  story  than  the  true  one.  He  is  so  fearful  of 
not  explaining  all  the  damning  facts  that  he  remembers  tliat  he 
overdoes  it.  Self-deception  and  self-pity  help  him  to  distort  his 
story  and  also  to  forget  some  important  details. 


16  Why  Some  Men  Kill 

There  are  two  classes  of  criminals  who  make  truthful  con- 
fessions when  the  pressure  of  circumstances  becomes  so  cruel 
as  to  make  it  seem  possible  that  a  clearing  up  of  the  mystery 
will  be  of  advantage,  or  when  mental  distress  or  remorse  leads 
the  offender  to  unburden  his  heart.  Of  course  the  motive  is 
selfish  in  either  case.  In  saying  that  the  confession  is  truthful 
I  do  not  mean  that  it  is  apt  to  be  literally  true,  but  that  it  is 
true  in  its  main  features.  There  may  be  a  vital  fact  omitted 
but  enough  will  be  told  so  that  the  balance  can  be  worked  out, 
remembering  that  the  criminal  is  seeking  some  means  of  justi- 
fying himself.  Take  the  confession  of  the  man  in  the  Green 
Trunk  murder  mystery  in  Portland  in  1917.  A  green  trunk  had 
been  found  floating  in  the  Willamette  river  and  upon  investi- 
gation it  was  found  to  contain  the  murdered  body  of  a  middle 
aged  man.  It  was  known  that  this  man  had  come  to  Portland 
a  few  weeks  before  with  a  male  companion,  but  this  other  man 
had  disappeared.  The  horse  and  wagon  was  found  which 
hauled  the  trunk  from  the  lodging  house  to  the  river  but  there 
the  clues  ended. 

The  circumstances  indicated,  however,  that  these  men  were 
homosexual  lovers  and  a  search  was  instituted  in  the  under- 
world of  the  Pacific  Coast  for  the  missing  man.  It  was  a  year 
before  he  was  found  and  brought  back  to  Portland  for  trial. 
He  admitted  that  he  belonged  to  the  tragically  unfortunate  class 
who  are  born  into  the  world  with  the  homosexual  temperament 
and  he  explained  his  partnership  with  the  murdered  man.  He 
possessed,  as  all  persons  of  that  type  do,  an  inferior  nervous 
system,  which  accounts  for  what  is  described  as  sexual  inver- 
sion. He  did  not  find  it  out  until  he  was  twenty  years  old  and 
then  he  knew  why  he  was  "queer." 

The  normal  ways  of  living  and  loving  were  closed  to  him 
and  so  he  drifted  into  perverted  ways  and  finally  while  under 
the  influence  of  an  unusual  amount  of  liquor  he  became  a  homi- 
cide in  a  moment  of  exasperation.  He  admitted  that  he  drove 
that  horse  and  wagon  around  the  city  for  two  or  three  hours 
before  he  put  the  trunk  in  the  river.  He  did  not  tell  the  whole 
story  to  one  person  but  made  partial  confessions  to  different 
ones.  His  opinion  of  his  situation  had  a  good  deal  of  interest. 
His  own  verdict  was,  "I  am  the  victim  of  circumstances."  In 
the  penitentiary  he  is  a  model  prisoner  and  has  nothing  to 
distinguish  him  except  the  fact  that  he  is  the  man  of  the  Green 
Trunk  Murder  Mystery. 


Confessions  of  Crime  17 

There  is  another  type  of  the  nieiitally  and  nervously  abnor- 
mal who  are  possessed  or  obsessed  with  an  ugly  and  contrary 
disposition  which  impels  them  to  defy  all  conventions  and  to 
despise  tlieir  fellows.  Breaking  the  law^  is  in  the  nature  of  a 
diversion  to  these  individuals  which  gives  satisfaction  to  a  brain 
and  nervous  system  at  war  with  itself.  When  the  crisis  comes 
such  a  man  rather  enjoys  telling  how  cleverly  he  defied  the 
law  though  he  admits  its  unwisdom  so  far  as  it  touched  his 
personal  fortunes.  These  men  have  good  intentions  but  the 
world  would  have  to  be  made  over  to  harmonize  with  their 
pathologically  crooked  habits  of  thought.  These  delinquents  are 
recidivists  invariably  and  their  performances  would  read  like 
the  story  of  a  huge  practical  joke  perpetrated  with  the  design 
of  making  themselves  the  butt,  if  it  were  not  for  the  tragic  side. 

Another  kind  of  criminal  who  almost  invariably  confesses 
belongs  to  w^hat  is  called  the  moron  type.  An  adult  in  years  and 
with  the  physical  needs  of  a  man  the  moron  reasons  like  a 
child  and  has  little  power  of  self-control.  He  is  extremely  irri- 
table and  has  entirely  uncontrolled  fits  of  rage  and  is  often 
outrageously  profane  and  lacking  in  the  sense  of  modesty.  At 
the  same  time  he  has  the  child's  desire  for  approbation  and 
enjoys  the  emotional  exaltation  of  being  the  center  of  interest. 
He  is  very  cunning  and  enjoys  telling  of  his  "smart"  actions, 
but  he  has  no  foresight. 

This  kind  of  a  criminal  will  almost  always  confess  if  treated 
with  tact  and  he  will  give  details  of  a  personal  nature  which 
no  member  of  the  class  previously  mentioned  would  allude  to. 

These  personal  revelations  are  so  naive  and  childlike  that 
they  stamp  the  truth  upon  the  confession  or  its  principal  fea- 
tures. At  the  same  time  these  criminals  may  have  an  excessive 
vanity,  and  if  they  do  they  are  certain  to  lie  about  details  of 
their  crimes  in  order  to  make  them  appear  as  very  remarkable 
acliievements.  The  combination  of  child-like  remorse  for  wrong 
done  for  which  an  innocent  person  may  be  suffering,  a  desire 
for  approbation,  and  possibly  a  streak  of  intense  vanity  which 
has  never  had  much  to  feed  upon,  leads  the  criminal  of  this 
type  to  make  a  confession  which  is  a  hodge-podge  of  fact  and 
fiction. 

In  the  chapters  which  follow  there  is  an  account  of  a  murder 
and  a  confession  relating  to  it  which  is  of  this  type.  Some  of 
the  details  of  the  confession  are  grotesque  fabrications  but  the 
central  facts  are  undoubtedly  true. 


18  Why  Some  Men  Kill 

The  other  murder  and  confession  which  is  the  first  of  the 
two  accounts  as  printed  in  the  following  chapters  does  not  have 
these  grotesque  details  but  is  very  matter  of  fact  and  has  been 
verified  in  the  majority  of  details  given.  This  difference  in 
the  two  confessions  indicates  of  course  the  difference  in  per- 
sonality of  the  two  feeble-minded  offenders. 

The  account  of  the  murder  and  confession  in  the  first  chap- 
ters following  involves  a  man  of  nearly  40  years  old.  He  is 
physically  slight,  weighing  about  125  pounds,  and  with  very 
small  hands  and  an  asymetrical  head  and  face.  All  his  life 
he  has  gone  into  ungovernable  fits  of  rage  on  very  slight  provo- 
cation and  he  also  nurses  his  anger  until  he  has  an  opportunity 
to  gratify  it.  After  the  explosion  he  realizes  what  he  has  done 
and  the  possible  penalty  but  this  does  not  deter  him  from  doing 
much  the  same  thing  the  next  time  he  loses  his  temper.  Expe- 
rience is  altogether  wasted  on  him  for  while  he  does  not  forget, 
he  does  not  learn  from  anj'^  experience.  He  has  a  certain 
shrewdness  of  observation  and  forms  conclusions  quickly,  but 
anything  like  patient  thought  is  outside  of  his  realm  of  mind. 

The  most  vivid  impression  which  I  shall  always  retain  of 
him  is  that  he  is  now  at  38  years  still  in  the  mental  attitude 
of  a  boy  of  ten  whose  greatest  delight  is  to  play  Indian  and 
take  scalps  and  trot  around  in  the  woods  and  fish  and  hunt 
and  shoot  at  a  mark.  Instead,  however,  of  using  tin  knives,  a 
tomahawk  made  out  of  a  shingle  and  dipped  in  red  paint  and 
a  wooden  gun,  this  boy-man  when  he  is  not  in  some  jail  or 
penitentiary,  carries  a  very  business-like  knife,  and  a  small 
arsenal  of  firearms  which  he  can  use  with  skill.  He  likes  noth- 
ing better  than  to  live  in  the  jungle  with  some  hobo  of  criminal 
tendencies  and  exist  by  petty  stealing  varied  by  an  occasional 
job.  It  is  the  serious  business  of  life  for  him  to  know  all  the 
criminal  slang  and  the  ritual  of  jungle  crooks  including  the 
significance  of  various  marks  made  on  fences,  trees  and  barns 
and  the  signs  of  a  turned  up  trouser  leg  or  a  hat  of  a  particular 
color  or  one  worn  in  a  certain  way.  The  deadly  seriousness 
with  which  he  will  tell  of  the  significance  of  a  certain  kind  of 
hat  and  the  signs  by  which  the  predatory  crooks  of  the  jungle 
recognize  each  other  would  be  convulsing  if  there  were  not  a 
grim  reality  behind  this  child's  play  which  accounts  for  the 
brotherhood  of  criminal  tramps  who  live  in  the  woods  and 
along  the  highways  and  in  the  suburbs  of  large  towns,  loafing 
and  stealing  and  occasionally  mistreating  women  and  children. 


Confessions  of  (.rime  19 

Their  career  of  adventure  is  enlivened  by  occasional  visits  to 
the  lowest  places  of  amusement  in  the  cities  and  by  evading 
and  deceiving  the  police  and  sheriffs  to  whom  they  ap|)car  as 
more  or  less  harmless  hoboes.  To  this  brotherhood  belongs  the 
man  Mho  killed  William  Booth  at  Willamina,  Oregon,  on  Octo- 
ber 8,  lOin,  and  who  says  of  Booth,  "I  told  him  I  would  get  him 
and  I  did  get  him!" 

There  is  probably  no  doubt  but  that  the  fact  that  Booth's 
widow  and  a  young  man  who  was  a  neighbor  of  the  Booths  in 
Willamina  were  found  guilty  of  Booth's  murder  and  are  now 
in  the  state  penitentiary  where  Booth's  actual  murderer  is  doing 
time  for  larceny  committed  after  Booth's  death,  has  worked  on 
his  mind  until  he  imagined  that  the  authorities  knew  of  his 
guilt.  His  mental  powers  of  resistance  are  not  great  and  so 
he  found  it  a  relief  to  confess — this  sorry  boy-Indian-bad  man 
of  the  jungle. 

Mrs.  Wehrman's  murderer  who  is  of  a  slightly  different  type 
is  the  man  involved  in  the  second  tragedy  of  murder  related 
in  the  following  chapters. 

John  G.  H.  Sierks  is  nearly  30  years  old  and  he  also  belongs 
to  the  moron  class.  He  was  born  in  the  woods  of  Columbia 
County  and  never  went  to  school  in  his  life,  but  his  father 
taught  him  to  read  and  write  and  he  is  quite  proud  of  his 
ability  to  write  a  letter.  John  never  has  been  able  to  master 
mathematics.  If  his  father  attempted  to  correct  his  erratic 
use  of  the  multiplication  table  John  would  fly  into  a  passion 

and  ask,  "What  the difference  does  it  make  to  you?    I  am 

doing  this!"  John  preferred  children  for  playmates  when  he 
was  18  to  20  years  old  and  was  very  jealous  if  not  allowed  to 
associate  with  them.  His  greatest  delight  was  to  wander  through 
the  woods  with  a  gun  and  revolver,  for  he  has  a  passionate 
fondness  for  firearms.  He  has  a  good  sense  of  location,  and 
it  would  be  impossible  for  him  to  lose  himself  in  the  woods. 

He  is  much  attracted  by  the  opposite  sex  but  he  is  awkward 
in  showing  his  fondness.  The  wife  of  a  neighbor  tells  of  his 
meeting  her  in  a  wood  road  and  after  passing  her  of  his  hur- 
rj-^ing  back  through  the  timber  in  order  to  meet  and  pass  her 
again  and  of  repeating  this  attention  until  she  was  exceedingly 
frightened.  Of  course  he  has  been  made  the  victim  of  all 
sorts  of  stupid  practical  jokes  concerning  his  interest  in  women, 
which  has  made  it  more  difficult  for  him  to  approach  women 
and  girls  in  an  easy  way.     His  father  tells  of  John's  attempts  to 


20  Why  Some  Men  Kill 

kill  him  and  other  members  of  the  family.  On  one  occasion 
his  father  was  at  work  on  a  scaffold  and  John  said  to  his  sister 
and  the  folks  there  that  he  was  going  to  shoot  the  old  man 
and  every  damned  thing  off  of  the  scaffold  to  see  them  fall. 

On  another  occasion  he  gave  his  sister  some  poisoned  wheat 
to  give  to  his  little  brother  and  when  she  did  not  do  it  he  told  J 
his  father  to  look  out  for  Lena  as  she  had  some  poisoned  wheat 
and  w^as  going  to  take  it  to  kill  herself.  The  sister,  however, 
had  buried  the  wheat  and  did  not  say  anything  about  it  until 
questioned  because  John  had  a  habit  of  making  life  miserable 
for  her  when  she  told  of  his  bad  conduct. 

At  another  time  John  placed  a  charge  of  dynamite  in  a  ] 
stump  near  the  house  with  the  plan  of  setting  it  off  when  his 
father  was  near,  but  Lena  set  it  off  when  no  one  was  about, 
which  led  John  to  tell  her,  "You  are  always  sticking  your  nose 
in  my  business.  I'll  put  a  stop  to  that,"  etc.  One  of  the  neigh- 
bors said  that  John  told  him  that  he  set  giant  powder  under  a 
stump  and  if  it  had  not  been  for  the  girl  not  keeping  her 
damned  mouth  shut,  he  would  have  gotten  the  old  man  all 
right. 

His  father  said  John  often  asked  him  to  go  hunting  with  , 
him,  but  that  he  would  never  go  because  he  was  afraid  John  1 
would  shoot  him  in  the  back.  I 

John's  father  said  that  a  neighbor  had  three  or  four  young 
girls  and  that  his  children  used  to  go  to  play  with  them  but    , 
that  the   neighbors  objected   to  John's  coming.     John  became    j 
very  angry  and  said  that  his  brother  and  sister  should  not  go 
either.     They  did  go,  however,  and  while  there  playing  in  the    , 
chicken    house    three    shots   were    fired    and    one   bullet    went 
through  the  chicken  house  w^hile  the  children  were  there.     It 
was  not  long  until  John  came  along  with  a  rifle  and  said  to  the    , 
children,  "I  want  you  damned  kids  to  come  home."  I 

This  gives  an  idea  of  John's  conduct  when  he  was  crossed, 
and  of  course  when  he  had  been  drinking  (he  was  now  21) 
he  was  more  irresponsible  than  ever. 

John  is  very  vain  and  broods  over  schemes  to  make  it  appear  j 
that  he  is  smart  and  clever.  '■ 

His  confession  of  how  he  killed  Mrs.  Wehrman  in  Columbia 
County  because  she  would  not  respond  to  his  request  shows 
this  tendency  in  describing  how  he  made  the  trip  to  Scappoose 
at  night  and  got  the  revolver  out  of  Riley  and  Hassen's  cabin 
and  committed  the  murder  and  got  back  to  Washington  County 


Confessions  of  Crinit'  21 

by  the  next  mornini>.  Thai  wouhl  have  been  a  (hffieult  feat, 
but  it  has  since  come  to  hght  through  the  statement  of  John's 
sister  that  he  was  at  home  for  nearly  two  days  before  they 
discovered  the  body  of  Mrs.  Wehrman  and  her  child.  The  story 
of  all  the  circumstances  in  later  chapters  shows  John's  cunning 
and  how  he  came  to  repudiate  the  confession  after  he  had  made 
it.  John's  responsibility  is  not  very  great  but  this  brief  account 
shows  his  capacity  for  crime  and  the  temptations  which  he 
could  not  resist.  At  the  same  time  he  knows  the  difference 
between  right  and  wrong  and  has  been  constantly  unhappy 
about  what  he  did  and  cannot  refrain  from  talking  about  it. 
He  cannot  learn  from  experience  and  will  always  be  a  menace 
to  society  unless  he  is  confined. 


Chapter  III 

THE  MURDER  OF  WILLIAM  BOOTH  AND  THE  CONVICTION 
OF  WILLIAM  BRANSON  AND  MRS.  BOOTH 

In  the  pleasant  village  of  Willamina  on  the  banks  of  the 
Willamina  river  just  at  the  gateway  of  the  crossing  of  the  Coast  i 
mountains  to  the  Pacific  ocean,  the  Booth  family  was  living 
in  October  of  1915.  The  husband  and  father  was  William 
Booth,  a  laborer  and  mechanic  in  Willamina.  His  wife,  Anna 
Booth,  was  32  years  old  and  the  mother  of  two  children,  Lora, 
aged  twelve  years,  and  Ermel,  a  boy  several  years  younger. 
Mrs.  Booth's  father  and  mother  lived  about  two  miles  or  more 
to  the  west  and  north  of  Willamina,  and  Mrs.  Booth  was  in  the 
habit  of  walking  out  frequently  to  see  her  mother  who  was  not 
in  good  health. 

On  October  8th,  immediately  after  the  noonday  meal,  Mrs. 
Booth  left  her  home  to  walk  to  her  mother's.  Within  half  an 
hour  later,  Mr.  Booth  left  the  home  and  while  he  started  in  a 
different  direction  at  first  he  took  the  same  road  outside  of  the 
village  that  his  wife  had  to  follow  to  go  to  her  mother's.  It 
was  rumored  in  Willamina  that  Mr.  Booth  was  jealous,  at  least 
this  was  the  story  given  in  evidence  later,  for  on  this  day  Wil- 
liam Booth  was  shot  and  killed  by  someone  among  the  trees 
and  bushes  on  the  bank  of  the  river  a  mile  and  a  half  from 
Willamina.  This  spot  was  near  the  road  which  Mrs.  Booth  had 
to  follow  to  go  to  her  mother's  and  which  Mr.  Booth  also  fol- 
lowed. Mr.  Booth's  murdered  body  was  accidentally  discovered 
about  two  hours  after  the  killing. 

During  the  afternoon  of  October  8,  1915,  G.  D.  Carter,  who 
lived  a  few  miles  west  of  Willamina,  Yamhill  County,  Oregon, 
was  on  his  way  home  from  the  village  when  he  discovered  the 
dead  body  of  William  Booth  lying  by  the  edge  of  Willamina 
river.  Booth  had  been  killed  by  a  bullet  from  a  .38  caliber 
revolver. 

The  body  lay  on  its  back  by  the  edge  of  the  stream,  the 
feet  upstream,  and  one  hand  in  the  water.  Apparently  Mr. 
Booth  had  just  got  over  the  fence  which  came  down  to  the 
stream  at  right  angles,  for  his  body  was  above  or  on  the  up- 
stream side  with  his  head  near  the  fence  post.  He  had  been 
seen  by  Mrs.  Yates,  a  neighbor,  at  half-past  one  o'clock,  going 
towards  the  bushes  and  trees  on  the  river  bank  on  the  lower 


Willi  <.M  Hi(.(.i.\.  ;m  iiuiiatc  of  the  Ore- 
gon peiiitciitiiiry,  who  confessed  to  the 
murder  ol'  William  Hooth  at  Willamina, 
Oregon,  on  October  S.  I'.ll"),  and  whose 
story  is  corroborated  in  many  details  — 
(Chapters  :'>-.">.  Rij^inln  is  a  liis'i  -  tirade 
moron. 


The  Booth  Murdrr  23 

side  of  the  fence  just  before  the  shot  was  fired.  Mrs.  Yates, 
however,  did  not  attach  any  particuhir  significance  to  the  sound 
of  the  shot  which  she  heard  very  soon  after  Mr.  liooth  disap- 
peared among  the  hushes  and  trees,  and  it  was  two  hours  later 
or  3:30  P.  M.  before  the  body  was  accidentally  discovered  by 
Carter. 

There  was  no  direct  evidence  whatever  as  to  who  did  the 
shooting,  though  the  sheriff's  deputy  and  the  coroner  and 
neighbors  searched  the  narrow^  strip  of  woods  along  the  river 
bank  until  dark,  and  also  again  the  next  morning.  After  the 
conclusion  of  the  coroner's  inquest  the  next  day  William  Bran- 
son, a  young  man  of  23  years  and  a  neighbor  of  Booth's,  was 
arrested  for  the  murder.  Mrs.  Anna  Booth,  aged  32  years,  the 
widow  of  William  Booth,  was  also  arrested.  It  was  the  assump- 
tion in  the  neighborhood  that  young  Branson  was  improperly 
intimate  with  Mrs.  Booth,  and  that  Mr.  Booth  had  followed 
Mrs.  Booth,  who  was  on  her  way  to  visit  her  mother,  and  that 
Mrs.  Booth  and  young  Branson  were  surprised  by  the  injured 
husband,  whereupon  Branson  promptly  shot  and  killed  Mr. 
Booth.  This  theory  was  adopted  by  the  district  attorney  at 
William  Branson's  trial  for  murder,  but  the  only  evidence  of- 
fered the  jury  of  improper  intimacy  between  Mrs.  Booth  and  her 
young  neighbor  was  that  Branson  had  been  seen  on  numerous 
occasions  some  months  before  talking  to  Mrs.  Booth  as  she 
stood  on  the  front  porch  of  her  house  in  Willamina  while  he 
(Branson)    was  on  the  sidewalk  outside  of  the  yard. 

Judge  H.  H.  Belt,  who  was  the  trial  judge,  said  in  his  charge 
to  the  jury,  "It  is  claimed  in  this  case  on  the  part  of  the  prose- 
cution for  the  purpose  of  establishing  a  motive  on  the  part  of 
the  defendants  for  the  killing  of  William  Booth  that  illicit  or 
improper  relations  existed  between  the  said  defendants,  William 
Branson  and  Anna  Booth. 

"You  are  instructed  as  a  matter  of  law,  that  there  is  no 
evidence  in  this  case  establishing  adulterous  relations  existing 
between  the  defendant  Branson  and  Anna  Booth." 

It  was  admitted  by  the  defendant  Branson  that  he  had  bor- 
rowed a  .38  caliber  revolver  from  his  uncle  Milton  Carter  to 
take  on  a  fishing  trip  in  August  of  1915.  Mr.  Carter  says  this 
revolver  was  never  returned  to  him,  and  that  he  did  not  ask 
for  its  return  until  the  day  of  the  preliminary  hearing,  though 
he  admitted  that  Branson  told  him  in  hop-picking  time  to  go 


24  Why  Some  Men  Kill 

to  his  house  and  get  the  revolver  if  he  wanted  it.  Branson  says? 
that  the  revolver  had  disappeared  and  it  has  never  been  found,  i' 
Some  small  articles  of  jev^elry  disappeared  from  the  Branson 
home  at  the  same  time. 

There  is  no  doubt  but  that  Mrs.  Booth  was  somewhere  in 
the  neighborhood  when  her  husband  was  killed.    The  shot  was, I 
heard  at  about  1:30  P.  M.  t 

As  to  Branson,  various  witnesses  testified  to  seeing  him  at » 
the  brick  plant  (which  is  three-eighths  of  a  mile  from  the  place  | 
of  the  murder)  going  towards  the  localitj'^  on  a  bicycle  at  about }. 
one  o'clock  on  the  day  the  murder  was  committed.  Other  wit- 
nesses testified  to  seeing  Branson  in  Willamina  at  the  time  the 
murder  was  committed.  Branson  wore  a  red  sweater  on  the  3 
day  of  the  murder  and  was  a  noticeable  figure  in  consequence. 
There  was  a  discrepancy  in  the  time  as  to  when  the  different 
persons  involved  were  seen  at  the  brick  plant  and  bridge  ac- 
cording to  the  testimony  at  the  preliminary  hearing  and  at  the  ' 
trial.  There  was  no  direct  testimony  as  to  the  presence  of 
anyone  concerned  at  or  near  the  place  of  the  murder  except 
Booth,  who  was  seen  in  a  nearby  garden  just  before  the  shot 
was  heard.  Mrs.  Booth  was  seen  within  half  an  hour  later 
near  the  place.  That  is  to  say,  all  the  evidence  was  circum- 
stantial. At  the  first  trial  the  jury  disagreed.  Branson  and 
Mrs.  Booth  were  convicted  at  the  second  trial  but  the  verdict 
was  reversed  by  the  supreme  court.  At  the  third  trial  Branson 
was  convicted  of  murder  and  sentenced  to  the  penitentian^'^  for 
life.  Mrs.  Booth  was  not  tried  with  Branson  at  this  time,  but 
upon  advice  of  her  counsel  and  wdth  the  understanding  that 
she  would  be  paroled  from  the  penitentiar^^  at  the  end  of  one 
year,  she  pleaded  guilt}^  to  manslaughter  and  was  sentenced 
to  from  one  to  fifteen  years.  Mrs.  Booth  has  two  children  to 
whom  she  is  devoted  and  the  prospect  of  being  able  to  go  back 
to  them  at  the  end  of  a  year  decided  her  to  plead  guiltj^  as  a 
conviction  with  a  life  sentence  seemed  certain  if  she  insisted 
on  denying  her  guilt. 

CIRCUMSTANTIAL    EVIDENCE 

This  case  illustrates  the  weight  of  circumstantial  evidence 
where  the  suspicions  of  a  community  have  been  aroused,  and 
how  a  jur3'^  near  the  time  of  a  murder  may  disagree  as  to  the 
weight  of  the  circumstances  and  how  later  public  feeling  crys- 
talizes  into  a  conviction  of  guilt. 

One  of  the  best  prosecuting  attorneys  I  know,  who  had  no 


The  Booth  Murder  25 

interest  in  the  case,  said  to  me  that  in  view  of  the  evidence  he 
did  not  sec  what  tlie  jury  convicted  Branson  on.  01"  course 
somebody  killed  Booth  and  there  were  several  witnesses  who 
claimed  they  saw  Branson  and  Mrs.  Booth  going  in  the  direc- 
tion of  the  place  separately  (not  together)  before  the  time  of 
the  killing.  On  the  strength  of  that  testimony  a  boy  of  23  was 
sent  to  prison  for  life  and  the  widow  of  the  murdered  man 
would  have  received  the  same  sentence,  if  she  had  not  tried  to 
get  back  to  her  children  in  a  j^ear  by  pleading  guilty  to  man- 
slaughter. 

However,  here  is  another  piece  of  circumstantial  evidence 
quite  significant  which  was  brought  out  at  Branson's  trial  for 
murder : 

It  will  be  remembered  that  Branson,  according  to  all  wit- 
nesses, wore  a  red  sweater  on  the  day  of  the  murder. 

At  William  Branson's  trial  Harold  Lewis  and  Clarence  Car- 
ter testified  that  on  the  day  of  the  murder  they  were  at  work 
with  their  teams  in  a  field  about  half  a  mile  or  more  down  the 
Willamina  creek  from  the  place  of  the  murder,  and  that  at 
about  half  past  one  they  heard  a  shot  and  that  shortly  after- 
wards they  "saw  a  man  walking  pretty  fast  down  the  creek  in 
the  brush  right  in  the  edge  of  the  creek."  They  stopped  their 
horses  to  watch  this  man  who  was  some  250  j^ards  distant. 
After  they  stopped  their  horses  this  man  ducked  down  in  the 
hollow  and  the  witnesses  could  only  see  the  upper  part  of  liis 
body. 

The  district  attorney  asked,  "How  was  he  dressed?" 

Answer,  "He  had  on  either  a  black  or  dark  blue  jersey 
sweater  and  a  black  hat." 

This  man  was  seen  by  reputable  witnesses  and  he  ducked 
out  of  sight  when  they  stopped  their  teams  to  watch  him,  and 
this  occurred  shortly  after  the  shot  at  1 :30  which  undoubtedly 
killed  William  Booth.  No  one  but  Branson  was  under  sus- 
picion at  this  trial  and  it  was  admitted  that  he  wore  a  red 
sweater  on  the  day  of  the  murder.  Several  witnesses  claimed 
they  saw  him  at  the  bridge  a  quarter  of  a  mile  from  the  place 
of  the  shooting  and  several  others  claimed  they  saw^  him  in 
Willamina  near  the  time  the  shooting  occurred. 

The  story  of  the  man  seen  hurrying  down  the  creek  by 
Lewds  and  Carter  (which  was  told  at  Branson's  trial)  has  a 
particular  interest  in  view  of  the  confession  of  William  Biggin 
in  May  of  1917  that  it  was  he  who  killed  William  Booth  on 
October  8,  1915. 


26  Why  Some  Men  Kill  • 

The  circumstances  of  William  Riggin's  confession  indicate! 
that  he  was  suffering  from  remorse  for  his  crime  and  also 
because  Booth's  widow  and  young  Branson  were  paying  the  pen- 
alty for  this  murder.  f 

In  making  this  confession  to  his  father,  G.  L.  Riggin,  whom ' 
he  had  requested  to  be  present,  and  to  Sheriff  Applegate  audi 
Deputy  Sheriff  McQuillan  at  Hillsboro,  William  Riggin  began  by 
holding  up  two  fingers  and  saying,  "two  are  suffering  for  some- 
thing they  haven't  done,"  and  went  on  and  gave  the  details  of 
his  killing  William  Booth  at  Willamina. 

In  explaining  his  motive  for  killing  Booth,  Riggin  said  that  1 
Booth  "had  it  in  for  him"  and  had  publicly  called  him  a  "con" 
and  had  warned  him  to  keep  away  from  his   (Booth's)    wife. 
Riggin  is  vindictive  and  uncontrolled  in  his  passions  and  has  . 
homicidal  tendencies. 

Riggin  described  in  his  confession  the  place  where  he  shot 
Booth  and  said  that  afterwards  he  walked  down  through  the 
brush  to  where  he  left  his  horse  which  he  had  hired  in  McMinn- 
ville.  "At  the  time  the  shooting  took  place  I  wore  a  blue  shirt, 
corduroy  pants  and  high-top  corked  shoes,"  In  a  latter  statement 
to  me  he  volunteered  the  information  that  he  wore  a  black  hat. 

There  is  also  some  significant  circumstantial  evidence  about 
Riggin's  shoes.  At  the  third  trial  it  came  out  incidentally  that 
marks  of  hob-nailed  shoes  were  found  in  the  soft  soil  by  Booth's 
dead  body.  On  the  day  of  the  murder  Branson  was  wearing  but- 
ton shoes  with  smooth  soles,  while  the  shoes  that  Riggin  said  he 
wore  had  projecting  nails. 

Riggin's  confession,  made  many  months  after  Branson's  trial, 
is  thus  clearly  confirmed  by  testimony  given  at  Branson's  trial 
for  the  murder  of  Booth  in  these  particulars  which  obviously  at 
the  time  had  no  possible  bearing  on  Branson's  guilt.  Harold 
Lewis  and  Clarence  Carter  testified  that  they  "saw  a  man  walk- 
ing pretty  fast  down  the  creek  in  the  brush  right  in  the  edge  of 
the  creek,"  shortly  after  they  heard  the  shot  at  1 :30  P.  M.  When 
they  stopped  their  teams  to  watch  him  he  ducked  down  and 
soon  disappeared.  They  said  this  man  "had  on  either  a  black  or 
dark  blue  jersey  sweater  and  a  black  hat." 

Branson  wore  a  red  sweater  and  was  riding  a  bicycle  on  the 
public  highway.  Branson  also  wore  button  shoes  with  smooth 
soles,  while  Riggin  says  he  wore  "corked  shoes"  and  the  testi- 
mony at  the  third  trial  of  Branson  showed  that  someone  with 
hob-nailed  shoes  had  stood  near  Booth's  body. 


The  Booth  Murder  27 

Riggin  said  in  his  confession  that  he  shot  Wilhani  Hoolh. 
Then  he  went  on  to  say  that  he  went  to  Willamina  on  Octoher 
7th,  1915,  on  a  horse  which  he  hired  at  a  stable  in  McMinnville. 
He  stayed  over  night  in  Wiihiniina  and  on  the  8th  he  walked  up 
the  river  and  practiced  shooting  in  the  timber  for  a  couple  of 
hours.  Then  he  came  down  the  road  and  saw  Billy  Branson  and 
Mrs.  Booth  talking  together  but  he  did  not  know  if  they  saw  him. 
Riggin  said  he  had  talked  with  a  man  in  Willamina  who  spoke 
of  Branson  going  with  Mrs.  Booth  and  of  William  Booth  "trailing 
them,"  (One  of  the  state's  witnesses  testified  that  he  talked  to 
William  Branson  about  Booth  being  jealous  and  that  Branson 
was  defiant  and  threatening.  ,  Branson  denied  this  on  the  stand, 
however.)  Soon  after  seeing  Branson  and  Mrs.  Booth  talking, 
Riggin  saw  Mr.  Booth  coming  across  a  field  and  he  shot  at  him 
but  missed.  He  ducked  down  out  of  sight  and  when  Booth  came 
on  again  he  waited  until  he  was  about  thirty  j'ards  away  and 
then  shot  him  with  his  revolver,  a  thirty-eight  Smith  and  Wesson. 
"After  I  shot  he  partly  turned  around  and  fell  kind  of  on  his  left 
side." 

Apparently  after  assuring  himself  that  Mr.  Booth  was  dead, 
Riggin  said  that  he  "lit  out  to  the  left  and  went  down  through  the 
brush."  He  went  to  a  vacant  shed  near  an  old  sawmill  on  the 
edge  of  Willamina  where  he  had  put  his  horse.  "It  was  a  spotted 
pony  with  a  roached  mane."  He  rode  to  McMinnville  b}'  way  of 
Walker  Flat  and  turned  the  horse  loose  in  the  stable.  There  was 
no  one  in  the  stable  at  the  time. 

Then  Riggin  says  he  walked  back  to  Walker  Flat  and  stayed 
there  three  days  with  a  man  who  was  making  boards  and  posts. 
After  this,  "I  went  on  over  to  Tillamook  and  ditched  the  revolver 
and  belt  at  Pinky  Stillwell's  place.  I  put  the  revolver  inside  the 
picket  fence.  At  the  time  the  shooting  took  place  I  wore  a  blue 
shirt,  corduroy  pants  and  high-topped  corked  shoes." 

William  Riggin  is  about  38  years  old  and  has  been  a  "bad 
man"  for  these  20  years.  He  has  a  vindictive,  revengeful  nature 
and  suffers  from  uncontrolled  fits  of  rage.  He  began  his  career 
of  crime  as  a  youth  by  stealing  a  horse  and  saddle.  For  this  he 
was  sent  to  the  reform  school  at  Salem.  At  a  later  period  he 
went  to  the  penitentiary  for  larceny,  and  served  various  senten- 
ces in  county  jails,  according  to  his  own  account.  Within  two 
weeks  after  the  murder  of  Booth  Riggin  was  arrested  for  stealing 

*  Note:    William  Riggin's  confession  is  given  in  full  in 
Appendix  A. 


28  Why  Some  Men  Kill 

a  gun,  was  convicted  and  sentenced  to  the  penitentiary  where  he 
is  now.  Riggin's  reputation  as  a  thief  was  such  that  the  sheriff 
of  Washington  County  asked  the  Governor  for  permission  to 
take  him  to  Hillsboro  to  clear  up  some  robberies.  Riggin  was 
very  much  disturbed  by  being  taken  to  the  Hillsboro  jail  from  the 
penitentiary  and  he  finally  blurted  out  to  the  sheriff:  "I  know 
what  you  want  me  for;  you  want  me  for  the  Booth  murder."      ' 

Riggin's  vindictive,  uncontrolled  rage,  which  led  him  to  lie 
in  wait  for  Booth  and  kill  him,  had  been  satisfied  and  remorse 
had  followed  and  he  told  the  sheriff  if  he  would  send  for  his 
(Riggin's)  father  he  would  tell  the  whole  story,  which  he  did 
upon  his  father's  arrival  at  the  Hillsboro  jail. 

For  the  sake  of  brevity  I  will  give  the  facts  corroborating  his 
confession  as  I  go  along.  Riggin  said  he  hired  a  horse  in 
McMinnville  to  ride  to  Willamina  at  the  time  he  killed  Booth. 
Here  follows  sworn  statement  of  A.  R.  White,  who  kept  a  livery 
stable  in  McMinnville : 

"I,  A.  R.  White,  being  sworn  depose  and  say  that  I  keep  a 
livery  and  feed  stable  in  McMinnville  and  have  been  in  that  busi- 
ness for  the  past  five  or  six  years.  I  remember  renting  a  spotted 
pony  with  a  roached  mane  to  Bill  Riggin  about  the  time  that 
William  Booth  was  killed  in  Willamina  in  1915,  I  think  that 
Bill  said  he  wanted  to  ride  the  pony  to  Willamina  but  I  cannot 
speak  with  absolute  certainty.  I  remember  that  I  told  Bill  Riggin 
that  I  had  a  bunch  grass  pony  who  was  mean  to  ride.  Bill  said 
that  did  not  matter,  I  remember  that  Bill  had  the  pony  about 
three  days  and  that  I  found  the  pony  in  the  stable  one  morning 
and  did  not  see  Bill  Riggin  again  at  all  after  he  hired  the  pony. 
I  also  remember  very  distinctly  that  Bill  never  paid  for  the  use 
of  the  pony  at  the  time  mentioned  in  October,  1915." 

(Signed)  A.  R.  White. 

In  regard  to  Riggin  being  seen  in  Willamina,  Mrs.  Lottie 
Smith,  half-sister  of  Riggin's,  says  that  she  knows  that  Riggin 
was  in  Willamina  at  the  time  of  the  murder,  though  she  does 
not  remember  seeing  him  that  day.  The  brother  and  sister  talked 
it  over  in  my  presence  and  Riggin  told  his  sister  of  seeing  her  on 
a  load  of  ties  coming  into  Willamina.  She  admitted  making  such 
a  trip  and  described  the  pony  Riggin  rode  but  said  she  did  not 
remember  the  exact  day,  but  that  it  was  about  the  time  of  the 
killing  of  Booth.  This  Mrs.  Lottie  Smith  was  living  a  few  miles 
from  Willamina  at  the  time  of  the  murder. 


The  Booth  Murder  29 

At  the  trial  of  William  Branson  Mrs.  Yates  testified  to  seeing 
Booth  in  her  garden  just  hcfore  the  shooting  and  said  that  he 
went  towards  the  road  and  jumped  over  the  fence  and  turned  to 
the  east  towards  the  creek  and  went  right  into  the  brush.  About 
a  minute  after  Booth  went  into  the  brush  she  heard  a  shot.  Some 
two  hours  later  Booth's  body  was  discovered  at  this  point  on  the 
water's  edge. 

In  a  supplementary  statement  made  by  Riggin  to  District  At- 
torney Conners  on  July  25,  1917,  Riggin  said,  in  answer  to  ques- 
tions that  Booth  was  in  the  garden  patch  (Yates'),  that  he  "went 
out  and  came  around";  that  he  "went  to  the  edge  of  the  road  and 
then  came  back,"  and  that  he  went  to  the  river  bank. 

Riggin's  statement,  made  in  July,  1917,  of  Booth's  movements 
just  before  he  shot  him  thus  corroborates  Mrs.  Y'^ates'  testimony 
at  William  Branson's  trial  in  February,  1916. 

There  is  another  point  which  seems  to  prove  conclusively  that 
Riggin  was  at  the  scene  of  the  murder.  On  July  19,  1917,  Warden 
Murphy,  at  Governor  Withycombe's  direction,  took  Riggin  to 
Willamina  with  the  idea  that  Riggin  would  show  by  his  descrip- 
tion of  the  killing  on  the  spot  and  by  his  location  of  the  place 
where  the  body  w^as  found  whether  or  not  he  was  telling  the  truth 
in  his  confession.  Riggin  directed  the  party,  of  w^hich  I  was  one, 
to  the  spot  where  the  shooting  occurred.  Warden  Murphy  had 
never  visited  the  scene  of  the  crime  and  had  to  depend  on  Rig- 
gin's  directions.    I  will  quote  from  his  report  to  the  Governor: 

"I  asked  him  if  he  was  positive  that  this  was  the  place.  He 
stated  that  he  was,  and  I  also  asked  him  if  he  was  positive  where 
Booth  stood  and  he  said  he  was.  I  then  asked  him  what  he  did 
when  he  shot  him  and  he  said  he  went  down  the  creek  where  the 
body  lay  and  then  came  back  up  the  creek,  crossing  in  and  w^ent 
along  back  of  the  rOck  quarry  and  then  he  made  his  way  to  Wil- 
lamina where  his  horse  w^as  tied.  I  then  asked  him  to  show  where 
the  body  lay  and  to  describe  how  it  lay.  He  said  that  it  lay  by 
the  fence  that  ran  down  to  the  river  with  one  hand  in  the  water, 
and  the  head  down  stream.  At  this  point  I  asked  the  guard  to 
take  Riggin  away  that  I  might  talk  freely  with  the  parties  as  I 
did  not  know  whether  he  had  stated  the  location  correctly  or  not. 
After  Riggin  was  out  of  hearing,  I  inquired  of  the  parties,  espe- 
cially Mr.  Sherwin,  who  w^as  as  I  said  before  a  member  of  the 
coroner's  jury,  I  believe  being  the  foreman,  and  who  had  viewed 
the  body  in  an  official  capacity  and  he  said  Riggin  had  stated 
the  condition  correctly.     At  this  point  Mr.   Conner  stated  that 


30  Why  Some  Men  Kill 

Riggin  had  erred  in  saying  that  the  body  was  on  the  down  stream 
side.  In  order  to  be  exactly  fair  about  this  very  important  point 
I  requested  the  party  to  step  back  from  the  scene  25  or  30  paces 
and  had  Riggin  brought  up  and  asked  Mr.  Sherwin  to  take  Riggin 
to  the  water's  edge  and  have  him  show  him  exactly  how  the  body 
lay  and  where.  This  he  did  and  Riggin  told  him  that  the  body 
lay  on  the  upper  side  of  the  fence  and  the  head  down  stream,  the 
hand  in  the  water.  I  then  asked  Mr.  Sherwin  if  it  was  the  exact 
position  in  which  he  had  viewed  the  body  in  the  first  instance 
and  he  said  it  was." 

This  checks  up  Riggin's  confession  to  the  time  after  the  mur- 
der when  a  man  dressed  as  Riggin  said  he  was  went  down  the 
creek  after  the  shooting  and  was  seen  by  two  witnesses  who  tes- 
tified at  Branson's  trial. 

Riggin  said  he  returned  the  horse  to  McMinnville  and  "I 
walked  back  to  Walker  Flat  and  stayed  three  days  with  a  man 
who  was  making  boards  and  posts.  I  went  on  over  to  Tillamook 
and  ditched  the  revolver  and  belt  at  Pinkey  Stillwell's  place  on 
the  road  to  Tillamook." 

The  murder  occurred  on  the  8th  of  October,  1915.  Riggin 
says  he  stopped  three  days  at  Walkers  Flat  which  would  bring 
it  to  the  11th  or  12th.  I  saw  Mrs.  Annie  Springer,  a  half-sister  of 
Riggin's,  who  was  living  in  Moores  Valley  at  that  time,  on  the 
route  Riggin  said  he  took  to  Tillamook.  Her  sworn  statement 
follows : 

"I,  Annie  Springer,  being  sworn  depose  and  say  that  William 
Riggin  is  my  half-brother.  During  the  month  of  October,  1915,  I 
was  living  with  my  husband,  Albert  Springer,  on  the  Sunnybrook 
farm  in  Moore's  Valley,  about  eight  miles  west  of  the  town  of 
Yamhill.  Will  Riggin  came  to  our  place  on  the  morning  of  Oc- 
tober 12th,  1915.  He  seemed  awful  nervous  about  something. 
I  asked  him  to  come  into  the  house,  but  he  said  he  was  in  a  hurry 
and,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  he  only  remained  in  the  yard  some  fif- 
teen minutes. 

"I  urged  him  to  come  in  and  he  said,  'The  sheriff  is  after  me. 
I  asked  him  what  he  had  done  and  he  said  in  his  short  way,  ' 
ain't  done  nothing.' 

"The  reason  that  I  can  tell  the  day  of  October  in  1915  whe 
Bill  came  to  our  place  is  that  we  were  getting  ready  to  come  to 
Moose  Lodge  banquet  in  McMinnville,  which  was  held  that  day 
and  because  the  day  before,  October  11th,  is  my  birthday." 

(Signed)  Mrs.  Annie  Springer 


y 


The  Booth  Murder  31 

In  Riggin's  verbal  statement  to  me  he  said  that  he  also 
stopped  at  F.  L.  Smith's,  a  neighbor  of  Mrs.  Annie  Springer's.  John 
Riggin,  a  half-brother,  lived  at  F.  L.  Smith's  and  he  has  made  a 
sworn  statement  saying  that  when  he  came  home,  the  Smith  fam- 
ily told  him  that  Rill  Riggin  had  stopped  there  and  said  he  was 
going  to  Tillamook.  Mrs.  Annie  Springer  had  also  told  him  that 
Rill  Riggin  was  at  her  home  on  October  12. 

Rill  Riggin's  father  made  an  investigation  of  Rill's  move- 
ments at  the  time  of  the  murder  and  his  conclusions  agree  with 
this  account.  The  Riggin  family  were  unwilling  to  believe  that 
Rill  committed  this  murder  but  the  facts  which  they  personally 
knew  in  connection  with  Rill's  confession  finally  convinced  them 
that  Rill  was  telling  the  truth.  Riggin's  father  says  that  Rill  ought 
to  be  permanently  confined  so  that  he  won't  do  any  more  harm. 


Chapter  IV. 

WILLIAM  RIGGIN  SHOWS  WARDEN  MURPHY  WHERE  HE  " 
CONCEALED  THE  REVOLVER 

William  Riggin,  in  his  confession  describing  how  he  killed 
Booth,  told  what  he  did  with  the  revolver.  He  said  he  took  it 
with  him  on  his  trip  to  Tillamook  a  few  days  after  the  murder 
and  hid  it  on  Pinkey  Stillwell's  place,  some  15  miles  east  of  Tilla- 
mook. Inasmuch  as  Riggin  was  arrested  soon  after  his  arrival  at 
Tillamook  and  has  been  confined  in  jail  ever  since,  he  has  had  no 
opportunity  to  "plant"  the  revolver  since  his  trip  to  Tillamook. 
We  know  from  the  independent  testimony  of  various  witnesses 
that  Riggin  made  this  trip  to  Tillamook  almost  immediately  after 
Booth  was  killed,  and  the  revolver  plainly  shows  that  it  was  ex- 
posed to  the  weather  for  a  long  period.  It's  a  .38  caliber  revolver 
and  Booth  was  killed  by  a  .38  caliber  bullet.  I 

On  May  22,  1917,  Warden  Murphy  took  Riggin  to  Tillamook 
at  Governor  Withycombe's  direction  and  out  to  the  place  where 
Riggin  said  he  hid  the  revolver.  Warden  Murphy  says  that  Rig- 
gin "unhesitatingly  kicked  aside  the  leaves  and  released  a  .38 
Smith  and  Wesson  revolver  with  which  he  claimed  he  commit- 
ted the  deed."  This  revolver  is  now  in  the  possession  of  the 
warden. 

In  August  of  1917  I  was  in  Tillamook  and  became  acquainted,, 
with  Malcolm  Easton,  whose  sworn  statement  follows:  | 

"I,  Malcolm  Easton,  being  sworn  depose  and  say  that  I  am  a 
resident  of  Tillamook,  Oregon,  and  that  I  have  lived  there  for 
the  past  seven  years,  and  that  at  the  present  time  I  am  night  clerk, 
in  the  Tillamook  Hotel.    In  the  fall  of  1915  I  was  at  work  in  ai 
railroad  camp  at  Tillamook  and  had  been  in  the  town  of  Tilla- 
mook for  a  number  of  days  spending  my  money  in  the  saloons. 
Norman  Myers,  marshal  in  Tillamook,  asked  me  one  evening, 
when  I  had  spent  all  my  money  and  was  f eehng  disgusted  with 
myself,  where  I  was  going  to  sleep  that  night,  and  offered  me  a 
bed  in  the  county  jail,  which  I  accepted.    Myers  put  me  in  a  cell 
with  a  man  by  the  name  of  William  Riggin  who  had  been  ar-  ■ 
rested  for  steahng  a  gun.     Riggin  was  a  good  deal  excited  and  ,, 
talked  to  me  all  night  especially  about  guns  of  different  kindsrj 
and  about  criminal  things  he  had  done  and  of  crimes  he  knew  ,, 
about.    Among  other  things  Riggin  told  me  that  he  had  shot  at  a  , 
farmer  as  he  came  across  a  field  before  he  came  to  Tillamool- 


The  Booth  Murder  33 

and  that  he  had  hidden  a  gun  on  Pinkey  Stillwell's  place,  east  of 
Tillaniook,  as  he  came  across  the  mountains. 

"Riggin  did  not  tell  me  that  he  killed  this  man,  and  I  did  not 
think  of  the  matter  in  connection  with  the  murder  of  William 
Booth  at  Willamina  until  this  summer  when  Riggin  was  brought 
to  Tillamook  by  Warden  Murphy.  Clark  Hadley  told  me  that 
Riggin  found  the  revolver  on  Pinkey  Stillwell's  place  that  he  said 
he  had  hidden  there  after  he  used  it  to  kill  Booth.  Then  I  remem- 
bered the  stoiy  Riggin  told  me  in  the  county  jail  of  his  shooting 
at  a  farmer  as  he  crossed  a  field  and  of  hiding  a  gun  on  Pinkey 
Stilhveirs  place  as  he  came  across  the  mountains.  I  asked  Con- 
stable Epplett  to  speak  to  Warden  Murphy  about  my  knowledge 
of  Riggin's  story.  I  talked  to  Clark  Hadle}^  about  my  experience 
with  Riggin  and  also  to  Norman  Myers.  Later  I  mentioned  it  to 
Mr.  Gregory,  who,  I  understand,  was  on  the  Oregonian  staff,  and 
asked  his  advice  about  informing  the  warden  of  the  penitentiary 
or  the  Governor. 

"I  felt  that  I  ought  to  inform  the  authorities  of  my  knowledge 
of  the  matter,  and,  in  fact,  I  had  written  a  letter  to  Warden 
Murphy  when  I  read  in  the  Oregonian  Mr.  Murphy's  report  of  how 
Riggin  showed  where  Booth's  body  lay  after  he  shot  him. 

"I  spoke  to  Mr.  Myers  about  it  and  he  said  it  would  not  be 
necessar\'  for  me  to  send  the  letter  for  nobody  could  have  any 
doubt  of  the  truth  of  Riggin's  confession  after  reading  the  report 
of  Warden  Murphy's  investigation. 

"1  realize  that  the  truth  of  my  statement  of  what  Riggin  told 
me  in  the  county  jail  at  Tillamook  about  his  shooting  at  a  farmer 
as  he  crossed  a  field  and  of  his  hiding  a  gun  on  Pinkey  Stillwell's 
place  afterwards  as  he  came  across  the  mountains  will  be  re- 
garded as  depending  upon  my  reputation,  and  that  my  irregu- 
larities in  the  way  of  drinking  may  be  held  to  damage  my  credi- 
bility, but  I  have  lived  in  Tillamook  for  a  number  of  years  and 
quite  a  number  of  people  know  me,  and  I  am  willing  to  leave 
the  question  of  my  honesty  and  truthfulness  with  them. 

"I  was  not  intoxicated  the  night  I  spent  in  jail  with  Riggin  in 

Ithc  fall  of  1915,  but  I  had  been  drinking  and  had  spent  all  my 
money  and  was  disgusted  with  myself  and  accepted  Marshal 
.  Myers  offer  of  a  bed  in  the  jail.  I  told  Myers  in  the  morning 
ef  what  kind  of  a  chap  he  had  put  me  in  with,  but  as  I  was  not 
anxious  to  be  mixed  up  with  a  fellow  who  told  stories  of  law 
breaking  that  Riggin  told,  I  put  the  matter  out  of  my  mind  until 


34  Why  Some  Men  Kill 

Riggin  was  brought  to  Tillamook  by  Warden  Murphy  and  found 
the  revolver  that  he  said  he  had  hidden." 

(Signed)  Malcolm  Easton. 

Malcolm  Easton  is  evidently  sincere  in  his  desire  to  tell  of 
Bill  Riggin's  statement  to  him  in  October  of  1915  and  gave  me 
the  names  of  a  number  of  citizens  of  Tillamook  who  would 
vouch  for  his  honesty. 

I  made  inquiries  in  Tillamook  about  Mr.  Easton  and  the  re- 
sponses from  several  men  of  good  standing  in  the  community 
satisfied  me  that  Mr.  Easton  is  thoroughly  reliable  and  that  he 
has  given  the  information  concerning  Riggin  because  he  believes 
it  is  a  duty  which  he  owes  the  public. 

WHO  KILLED  WILLIAM  BOOTH.'* 

The  solving  of  a  murder  mystery  where  the  only  evidence 
consists  of  inferences  from  known  or  proven  facts,  and  where 
there  is  no  direct  evidence,  is  very  much  like  solving  a  Chinese 
puzzle  consisting  of  many  pieces  of  irregular  shapes.  When  all 
the  pieces  are  in  their  proper  places,  all  the  pieces  are  used  and 
the  puzzle  is  complete  and  perfect  in  form.  Sometimes  the  puz- 
zle is  apparently  solved  without  using  all  the  pieces,  but  there 
are  no  superfluous  parts  in  a  puzzle;  they  all  must  be  used. 

So  in  solving  the  Booth  murder  it  is  absurd  to  say  that  there 
were  superfluous  facts  at  Branson's  trial  which  meant  nothing. 
And  yet  it  is  beyond  dispute  that  the  jury  which  convicted  Bran- 
son did  not  consider  all  the  facts  in  the  case. 

To  be  blunt  the  jury  assumed  that  Branson  and  Mrs.  Booth 
were  together  near  the  Yates  place  and  that  Branson  and  his 
witnesses  were  lying.  They  were  so  sure  Branson  was  lying  that 
they  convicted  him  of  murder  though  to  do  that  they  had  to 
assume  a  motive  of  criminal  intimacy  between  Branson  and 
Mrs.  Booth,  which  the  judge  instructed  them  was  not  proven. 

There  was  evidence  given  at  the  trial  to  show  that  the  day 
after  the  murder  a  woman's  hair  "rat"  was  picked  up  in  the 
brush  60  to  80  feet  from  where  Booth  was  killed,  and  certain 
witnesses  who  were  admittedly  not  experts,  told  the  jury  that 
this  "rat"  was  similar  to  hair  rats  owned  by  Mrs.  Booth.  Mrs. 
Booth's  sister  testified  that  Mrs.  Booth's  "rats"  contained  human 
hair  and  that  the  "rat"  found  in  the  brush  did  not.  This  ques- 
tion was  thus  left  very  much  in  the  air  and  the  jury  drew  their 
conclusions  from  the  testimony  of  witnesses  who  did  not  qualify 
as  experts.    The  vagueness  of  the  inference  to  be  drawn  even  if 


The  Booth  Murder  35 

the  "rat"  found  in  the  brush  was  actually  similar  to  Mrs.  Booth's 
rats  is  evident.  It  was  not  compolent  to  prove  that  Mrs.  Booth 
was  near  the  scene  of  the  murder  at  the  time  it  was  committed, 
and  no  attempt  was  made  to  prove  that  the  spot  where  the  rai 
was  found  was  a  rendezvous  for  Mrs.  Booth  and  William  Bran- 
son, About  all  that  could  be  said  for  it  was  that  it  tended  to 
give  color  to  suspicion  against  Mrs.  Booth. 

The  jury  was  willing  to  go  counter  to  the  courts  instructions 
that  there  was  no  proof  of  adulterous  relations  between  Mrs, 
Booth  and  William  Branson,  and  imagine  the  motive  because 
they  were  so  certain  that  Branson  was  Ij'ing  about  not  being  with 
Mrs.  Booth  in  the  neighborhood  of  Mrs.  Yates'  place  that  day. 

This  comi)elled  the  members  of  the  jury  to  overlook  or  forget 
as  superfluous  certain  facts  which  certainly  were  part  of  the 
mystery  of  the  murder. 

The  first  of  these  facts  was  that  when  Booth's  body  was  dis- 
covered there  were  footprints  found  beside  the  body  in  the  soft 
soil  in  the  edge  of  the  river.  These  footprints  were  made  by 
shoes  with  hob-nails.  The  law^-^ers  for  the  defendant  say  that 
undisputed  testimony  was  given  to  this  fact  at  Branson's  third 
trial  by  a  witness  for  the  prosecution.  Apparently  it  was  given 
incidentally,  but  at  any  rate  it  was  not  given  at  either  of  the 
previous  trials.  The  reason  that  this  is  an  important  fact  in 
solving  the  puzle  as  to  w^ho  killed  William  Booth  is  the  signifi- 
cant circumstance  that  William  Branson  wore  button  shoes  with 
smooth  soles  on  the  day  of  the  murder.  That  is  to  say  some  other 
man  than  William  Branson  stood  beside  Booth's  dead  body. 

And  yet  because  the  jury  believed  that  Branson  lied  they  were 
willing  to  leave  out  this  important  evidence.  They  were  willing 
to  admit  in  effect  that  some  other  man  who  had  hob-nailed  shoes 
must  have  stopped  by  the  spot  where  Booth's  body  lay  in  order 
to  find  Branson  guilt^^  of  murder. 

Another  piece  of  the  puzzle  which  the  jury  left  out  of  consid- 
eration was  the  testimony  of  Harold  Lewis  and  Clarence  Carter 
at  Branson's  trial,  Lewis  and  Carter  were  at  work  with  their 
teams  on  disc  plows  in  a  field  down  the  river  from  the  scene  of 
the  murder  on  that  afternoon.  Lewis  testified  that  they  heard 
a  shot  at  about  1 :30  P,  M.  and  that  shortly  after  he  "saw  a  maD 
walking  pretty  fast  down  the  creek  in  the  brush,  right  in  the 
edge  of  the  creek."  This  man  was  250  or  300  yards  from  Lewis. 
Lewis  stopped  his  horses  and  watched  him.     This  man   then 


36  Why  Some  Men  Kill 

ducked  down  in  the  hollow  and  Lewis  could  only  see  him  from 
the  waist  up  and  he  soon  disappeared. 

Question — "How  was  he  dressed?" 

Answer — "He  had  on  either  a  black  or  dark  blue  jersej 
sweater  and  a  black  hat." 

Lewis  could  not  see  his  face.  Clarence  Carter's  testimony 
was  identical  with  that  of  Lewis. 

Here  was  a  man  hurrying  away  from  what  later  proved 
to  be  the  scene  of  a  murder,  and  who  was  apparently  anxious  to 
get  out  of  sight  when  a  couple  of  men  stopped  their  teams  to 
watch  him.  This  man  obviously  could  not  have  been  Branson 
because  Branson,  according  to  all  the  witnesses  wore  a  red 
sweater  on  the  day  of  the  murder,  and  the  witnesses  who  said 
they  saw  him  down  the  river  from  the  spot  where  Booth  was 
killed  testified  that  he  was  riding  a  bicycle  and  was  riding  on  the 
road  without  attempt  at  concealment. 

Certainly  this  man  hurrying  down  the  creek  in  the  brush 
immediately  after  the  shooting  was  quite  as  important  a  piece  of 
the  puzzle  as  Branson  on  his  wheel  on  the  road.  However  the 
•  jury  left  him  out  of  their  considerations. 

There  is  no  question  but  what  the  jury  ignored  these  two  ele- 
ments of  the  mystery  of  the  murder,  and  guessed  that  Branson 
was  intimate  with  Mrs.  Booth  and  guessed  that  Mr.  Booth  caught 
them  in  the  brush  in  a  compromising  situation  and  guessed  that 
then  Branson  killed  Booth. 

WILLIAM  RIGGIN's  CONFESSION 

It  is  a  crucial  test  of  William  Biggin's  confession  to  see  if  all 
of  the  circumstances  "fit  in"  and  make  a  solution  of  the  murder 
which  is  complete. 

Biggin  says  he  hired  a  spotted  pony  with  a  roached  mane  and 
rode  to  Willamina  from  McMinnville.  Mr.  White  says  he  rented 
such  a  pony  to  Biggin  in  McMinnville  at  the  time  Booth  was 
killed.  Mrs.  Lottie  Smith,  Biggin's  sister,  says  she  saw  Biggin  in 
Willamina  and  described  the  pony  he  rode. 

Biggin  says,  in  a  statement  to  the  District  Attorney,  that  he 
was  at  Mrs.  Yates'  place  when  Booth  was  in  her  garden  and  he 
described  Booth's  going  to  the  road  from  the  garden  and  thence 
back  to  the  brush  at  the  bank  of  the  river  where  his  body  was 
afterwards  found. 

At  Wilham  Branson's  trial  Mrs.  Yates  described  Mr.  Booth's 
movements  in  her  garden  and  his  going  to  the  road  and  then  into 
the  brush  on  the  river  bank  where  his  dead  body  was  found  two 


The  Booth  Murder  37 

hours  later.  The  two  descriptions  of  Booth's  actions  just  before 
he  was  killed  agree. 

Riggin  told  of  leaving  the  spot  thus:  "I  lit  out  to  the  left  and 
went  down  through  the  brush.  I  walked  to  a  vacant  shed  near 
Willamina." 

Riggin  has  said  that  he  wore  a  blue  sweater,  corked  shoes  and 
a  black  hat. 

Lewis  and  Carter  testified  that  this  man,  hurrying  down 
through  the  brush,  wore  a  black  or  blue  sweater  and  a  black  hat. 

Thus  it  appears  that  the  testimony  of  Mrs.  Yates,  also  the  wit- 
ness who  said  there  were  footprints  made  by  hob-nailed  shoes  by 
Booth's  body,  and  the  testimony  of  Lewis  and  Carter,  all  agree 
with  the  facts  and  with  William  Riggin's  confession  describing 
how  he  killed  Booth. 

Curiously  enough  Riggin  says,  in  his  confession,  that  he  saw 
Mrs.  Booth  and  Branson  talking  together  near  Mrs.  Yates'  place. 
This  seems  to  fit  with  the  testimony  of  the  prosecution  that  Bran- 
son followed  Mrs.  Booth  and  was  but  a  few  minutes  behind  her 
on  the  road  when  she  crossed  the  bridge  three-eighths  of  a  mile 
below  Mrs.  Yates'  place. 

Booth  was  killed  on  October  8,  1915,  and  on  July  19,  1917, 
Warden  Murphy  took  Riggin  to  Willamina  to  have  him  point  out 
the  spot  where  Booth  was  killed  and  show  where  and  how  his 
body  lay. 

The  foreman  of  the  coroner's  jury  that  viewed  Booth's  body 
where  it  was  found  and  later  held  an  inquest  was  present.  The 
warden  asked  Riggin  to  show  this  foreman  of  the  coroner's  jury 
exactly  where  Booth's  body  lay  and  its  position.  Riggin  did  this 
and  the  foreman  of  the  coroner's  jury  said  that  Riggin  showed 
him  the  exact  position  in  which  Booth's  body  lay  as  he,  the  fore- 
man, had  seen  it  when  Booth  was  killed. 

Riggin  says,  after  taking  the  pony  back  to  McMinnville,  that 
he  went  to  Walker  Flat  and  stayed  with  a  man  there  three  days 
and  that  he  then  went  on  to  Tillamook. 

Mrs.  Annie  Springer,  Riggin's  half-sister,  who  was  very  loath 
to  believe  that  her  brother  had  killed  Booth,  says  that  William 
Riggin  came  to  her  home  in  Moores  Valley  on  October  12,  1915, 
but  was  very  nervous  and  would  not  stop.  On  being  urged  to, 
he  said,  "The  sheriff  is  after  me." 

The  murder  occurred  October  8.  Allowing  one  day  for  Riggin 
to  take  the  pony  to  McMinnville  and  to  go  to  Walker  Flat,  where 
he  says  he  remained  three  days,  it  would  be  the  12th  when  he 


38  Why  Some  Men  Kill 

started  for  Tillamook,  which  would  take  him  through  Moores 
Valley  where  his  sister,  Mrs.  Springer,  lived.  This  fits.  Why 
Riggin  should  say  to  his  sister,  when  urged  to  stop,  "The  sheriff 
is  after  me,"  unless  he  had  some  fear  that  he  might  be  after  him, 
is  inconceivable. 

It  seems  that  when  Riggin  was  crossing  the  summit  of  the 
Coast  Range,  on  the  Tillamook  trail,  that  he  met  four  young  men 
who  had  been  fishing  in  the  mountain  streams  and  that  he 
camped  with  them  in  a  deserted  cabin.  They  said  that  Riggin 
acted  so  strangely  and  insisted  on  sleeping  with  his  weapons  that 
two  of  the  four  kept  watch  the  first  half  of  the  night  and  that  the 
other  two  did  guard  duty  the  second  half  of  the  night.  There  is 
no  doubt  that  Riggin  frightened  them  thoroughly.  They  were  too 
much  scared  to  realize  that  Riggin  was  possibly  afraid  of  some- 
body following  him  and  getting  the  drop  on  him. 

Riggin,  in  his  confession,  said  that  he  "ditched  the  revolver" 
with  which  he  killed  Rooth  on  the  Pinkey  Stillwell  place.  On 
May  22,  1917,  Warden  Murphy,  at  the  direction  of  Governor 
Withycombe,  took  Riggin  to  Tillamook  and  they  went  from  there 
up  the  Trask  River  and  on  arriving  at  the  spot  the  warden  says 
Riggin  "unhesitatingly  kicked  aside  the  leaves  and  released  a 
.38  caliber  Smith  and  Wesson  revolver  with  which  he  claimed  he 
committed  the  deed." 

While  Riggin  was  in  jail  in  Tillamook  he  told  Malcolm 
Eastori,  as  previously  related,  about  shooting  at  a  man  east  of 
the  mountains  and  of  hiding  the  gun  on  Pinkey  Stillwell's  place. 
The  finding  of  the  revolver,  Easton's  testimony  about  Riggin's 
story  to  him  soon  after  the  murder  of  Booth,  and  Riggin's  con- 
fession of  the  murder  and  of  where  he  hid  the  revolver,  made  in 
the  spring  of  1917,  thus  fit  together  as  component  parts  of  the 
puzzle. 

Here  are  two  possible  solutions  to  the  mystery  of  who  killed 
William  Booth.  The  solution  which  points  to  the  guilt  of  Wil- 
liam Branson  and  Mrs.  Booth  ignores  absolutely  two  important 
facts  brought  out  at  Branson's  trial,  and  imagines  a  motive  for 
the  killing,  which  the  judge  cautioned  the  jury  against,  and  bases 
inference  on  inference  to  reach  a  conclusion.  Branson  had  al- 
ways borne  a  good  reputation  and  is  spoken  of  highly  by  all 
his  acquaintances  and  friends. 

The  other  solution,  which  points  to  William  Riggin  as  the 
murderer,  accounts  for  all  the  facts  testified  to  by  the  various 
witnesses,  and  Riggin's  confession  is  corroborated  in  many  par- 


The  Booth  Murder  39 

ticulars  as  I  have  just  pointed  out.  A  year  and  a  half  after  his 
confession  he  still  says  that  he  killed  Booth.  If  it  is  admitted 
that  the  correct  solution  of  a  criminal  mystery  must  account  for 
and  explain  all  the  facts  brought  out,  and  must  form  a  complete 
whole,  like  the  parts  of  an  intricate  puzzle,  then  the  solution  of 
the  mystery  of  the  killing  of  William  Booth  is  that  William  Rig- 
gin  killed  him  as  he  has  confessed  that  he  did. 


Chapter  V. 

APPEAL  TO  THE  PUBLIC  FOR  THE  RELEASE  OF  WILLIAM 
BRANSON  AND  MRS.  BOOTH 

The  various  trials  of  William  Branson  and  Mrs.  Anna  Booth 
for  the  murder  of  William  Booth  received  the  widest  publicity. 
Public  sentiment  was  very  deeply  aroused,  chiefly  because  the 
murder  was  apparently  unprovoked  and  because  there  was  no 
direct  testimony  connecting  Branson  and  Mrs.  Booth  with  the 
crime.  It  was  all  circumstantial  evidence,  which  is  to  say  people 
could  only  come  to  a  conclusion  as  to  who  committed  the  murder 
by  drawing  inferences  from  the  known  facts.  The  known  facts 
were  that  on  October  8  Mrs.  Booth  started  to  visit  her  mother  and 
left  her  home  a  little  before  half  past  twelve  P.  M.,  going  north 
from  Willamina.  A  little  time  after  Mr.  Booth  started  west  from 
Willamina  and  reached  a  point  about  one  hour  later  on  the  road 
Mrs.  Booth  followed  to  visit  her  mother.  He  was  seen  near  this 
point  by  several  people,  and  at  1 :  30  P.  M.  a  shot  was  heard,  which 
presumably  killed  him.  William  Branson  was  seen,  according 
to  a  number  of  witnesses,  three-eighths  of  a  mile  from  the  scene 
of  the  murder  going  in  the  same  direction  that  Mrs.  Booth  had 
gone.  This  was  about  half  an  hour  before  the  shot  was  fired. 
Other  witnesses  testified  that  William  Branson  was  in  Willamina 
at  the  time  the  murder  was  committed. 

The  only  circumstance  which  was  established  as  certain  was 
that  William  Booth  was  seen  close  to  the  point  of  the  shooting 
just  before  the  shot.  Mrs.  Booth  was  seen  about  half  an  hour 
later  on  the  road  some  10  rods  or  more  from  the  scene  of  the 
murder,  according  to  the  testimony  at  the  inquest.  At  the  trial 
the  same  witness  said  she  saw  Mrs.  Booth  ten  minutes  after  the 
shot  was  heard. 

The  jury  drew  the  inference  that  Mrs.  Booth  and  young  Bran- 
son were  together  in  the  brush  at  the  point  where  Booth  was 
killed.  From  that  inference  they  draw  the  second  inference  that 
Mrs.  Booth,  and  young  Branson,  who  was  23  years  old  (Mrs. 
Booth  was  32)  were  found  in  a  compromising  situation  by  Mr. 
Booth,  and  from  that  inference  they  drew  the  third  inference 
that  upon  being  discovered  in  a  compromising  situation  that 
young  Branson  promptly  shot  William  Booth  and  killed  him.  If 
it  had  been  estabhshed  as  a  fact  that  Branson  and  Mrs.  Booth 
were  guilty  of  adulterous  relations  there  would  have  been  a 


The  Booth  Murder  41 

motive  and  these  two  inferences  based  upon  another  inference 
would  have  had  a  semblance  of  probability,  but  the  court  spe- 
cifically instructed  the  jury  that  there  was  no  evidence  establish- 
ing adulterous  relations  between  the  two  defendants.  However, 
even  on  that  supposition,  which  the  jury  accepted  in  opposition 
to  the  judge's  charge,  it  is  worth  while  to  remember  that  while  an 
injured  husband  has  often  killed  his  wife's  seducer  at  the 
moment  of  discovery,  as  many  a  court  trial  will  witness,  and  as 
many  a  verdict  of  acquittal  on  the  ground  of  "the  higher  law" 
will  confirm,  there  is  no  record  that  I  ever  saw  or  heard  of  where 
the  seducer  killed  the  husband  on  the  instant  of  the  husband  dis- 
covering him  in  a  compromising  situation  with  his  wife.  It  is 
true  that  the  seducer  has  often  killed  the  husband,  with  or  with- 
out the  aid  of  the  wife,  but  not  at  the  instant  of  discovery  by  the 
husband  of  the  criminal  relation. 

It  is  proper  to  consider  this  because  as  part  of  the  assumed 
circumstantial  evidence  Branson's  motive  for  kilhng  Booth  was 
decided  by  the  jury  to  be  the  fact  that  Booth  caught  Branson 
with  Mrs,  Booth  in  the  brush.  The  Oregon  statute  says,  "An 
inference  must  be  founded  on  a  fact  legally  proved." 

To  brand  a  man  as  a  murderer  and  take  away  his  liberty  for 
life,  especially  a  young  man  who  had  always  borne  a  good  repu- 
tation, on  two  inferences  based  on  a  third  inference  which  "may" 
have  been  true  but  which  was  at  least  open  to  doubt,  is  simply 
to  call  suspicion  circumstantial  evidence.  *  The  woman  in  the 
case  has  two  young  children,  Lora  Booth,  a  girl  of  12  years  at 
the  time  of  the  trial,  who  is  being  cared  for  by  relatives,  and  also 
a  httle  boy,  Ermel,  who  is  younger  than  his  sister.  The  court  did 
not  administer  the  oath  to  Ermel,  as  he  was  too  young  to  realize 
what  testifying  under  the  oath  meant,  but  he  promised  to  tell 
the  truth. 

Of  course  it  should  be  remembered  that  the  community  was 
desperately  exercised  about  this  murder  and  Branson  had  been 
accused  and  he  could  not  prove  that  he  was  innocent. 

To  show  the  hysterical  spirit  which  prompted  this  conviction 
it  is  onlj^  necessary  to  give  another  case  of  a  murder  trial  where 
the  community  was  not  much  interested  and  where  the  accused 
persons  were  not  convicted.    In  the  spring  of  1918  two  men  were 
*  Note  :    The  question  of  proving  a  motive  for  a  crime 
where  there  is  only  circumstantial  evidence,  and  the  fur- 
ther question  of  basing  inferences  upon  inferences  is  taken 
up  at  length  in  Chapter  No.  11  on  circumstantial  evidence. 


42  Why  Some  Men  Kill 

indicted  for  the  murder  of  a  woman  found  dead  on  the  sidewalk 
of  Washington  street,  Portland.  The  two  men  and  the  woman 
were  in  a  room  on  the  third  floor  of  a  building  on  Washington 
street.  All  three  were  more  or  less  drunk  and  they  were  quarrel- 
ing and  it  is  certain  that  either  the  woman  fell  out  or  jumped  out 
or  was  thrown  out  of  the  window.  The  facts  were  fully  estab- 
lished that  the  three  were  in  the  room  and  were  drunk  and  were 
quarreling.  The  inference  was  very  obviously  plain  that  the 
woman  might  have  fallen  out  of  the  window.  Because  of  that 
possible  explanation  the  jury  could  not  agree,  and  a  second  jury 
also  failed  to  agree,  and  so  the  case  was  dismissed. 

In  the  Booth  case  there  was  no  testimony  to  show  that  Bran- 
son and  Mrs.  Booth  were  together  in  the  brush.  It  was  inferred 
that  they  were  because  they  had  been  seen  going  along  the  road, 
one  behind  the  other.  The  inference  that  Branson  and  Mrs.  Booth 
were  in  a  compromising  position  was  based  on  the  inference  that 
they  were  together  in  the  brush,  and  the  inference  that  Branson 
killed  Booth  was  based  on  the  inference  that  they  were  discov- 
ered by  Mr.  Booth  in  a  compromising  situation. 

Booth  was  killed  in  an  open  field.  He  might  have  been  shot 
from  across  the  river  or  from  a  distance  up  the  river.  The  shot 
might  have  been  an  accidental  one  or  it  might  have  been  fired 
with  the  intent  of  killing  Booth.  From  the  circumstances  there 
were  no  legitimate  inferences  to  be  drawn  either  in  law  or  in 
logic,  but  evil-minded  gossip  suggested  a  motive  and  the  jury 
found  Branson  guilty  of  murder  notwithstanding  the  eminently 
fair  charge  of  the  judge  to  the  jury  after  the  evidence  was  in. 

THE  ACTUAL  MURDERER 

Nearly  two  years  after  the  murder  William  Biggin  confessed 
to  killing  William  Booth,  and  the  investigation  which  I  have 
made  shows  that  his  confession  is  corroborated  by  the  facts  given 
in  the  preceding  chapters,  but  District  Attorney  Conner  refuses 
to  admit  his  mistake  in  convicting  Branson.  Branson  is  in  the 
penitentiary  under  a  life  sentence  for  murder  and  Mrs.  Booth  is 
also  in  the  penitentiary. 

Oregon  has  a  democratic  form  of  government,  and  every  citi- 
zen has  a  personal  interest  in  the  proper  administration  of  the 
criminal  law  and  in  procuring  justice. 

In  a  matter  where  the  laws  provide  no  remedy  for  such  a 
terrible  injustice    as    the    continued  imprisonment  of  citizens 


The  Booth  Murder  43 

wrongfully  convicted  of  crime,  and  where  the  actual  criminal 
has  been  discovered,  nothing  remains  but  an  appeal  to  public 
opinion  to  secure  the  pardon  of  these  innocent  persons  by  the 
Governor,  who  has  this  judicial  power  conferred  on  him  by  the 
constitution. 

An  appeal  to  the  public  opinion  must  be  made  by  responsible 
citizens  to  be  successful.  For  that  reason  the  complete  report  of 
the  investigation  of  this  case,  including  a  brief  of  the  testimony 
given  at  the  trial  and  the  sworn  statements  of  all  witnesses  who 
have  given  important  evidence,  and  also  accounts  by  the  w^arden 
of  the  penitentiary,  and  others  who  have  been  concerned  in  this 
matter,  have  been  submitted  to  many  citizens  who  are  prominent 
in  the  state.  Thej'  have  read  the  complete  reports  and  have  had 
the  advice  of  a  thoroughly  competent  lawyer.  Afterwards  they 
have  signed  the  following  statement  in  order  to  get  the  whole 
matter  before  the  people  of  the  state  of  Oregon. 

The  committee  appeal  to  the  voters  of  Oregon,  irrespective 
of  party,  to  petition  the  Chief  Executive  of  the  state  to  pardon 
William  Branson  and  Anna  Booth,  who  were  wrongfully  con- 
victed of  the  murder  of  William  Booth  at  Willamina,  Yamhill 
County,  on  October  8,  1915,  and  to  restore  them  to  the  full  rights 
of  citizenship. 

The  members  of  this  committee  have  each  read  and  consid- 
ered carefully  the  report  on  this  case,  which  includes  a  brief  of 
the  evidence  given  at  the  trial. 

In  order  to  be  fully  assured  of  the  merits  of  the  report,  the 
committee  secured  the  services  of  a  lawyer  of  recognized  ability 
who  has  had  experience  as  a  prosecutor.  This  lawyer  is  widely 
known,  and  he  was  employed  and  paid  by  this  committee  to 
study  carefully  all  the  evidence  given  at  the  trial  of  William 
Branson  and  Anna  Booth,  and  to  examine  and  weigh  the  report 
on  the  case  and  to  advise  this  committee. 

His  statement  follows : 

The  undersigned  was  employed  by  Mr.  George  A.  Thacher, 
representing  the  committee,  to  examine  the  record  of  the  trial 
of  William  Branson,  convicted  of  the  murder  of  William  Booth, 
and  to  report  his  opinion  as  to  the  guilt  or  innocence  of  Branson, 
based  on  said  record. 

I  have  examined  the  record,  and  the  brief  of  the  testimony, 
as  prepared  by  Mr.  Thacher,  and  also  his  report.  It  is  my  opinion. 


44  Why  Some  Men  Kill 

based  on  the  record,  and  aided  by  the  investigation  of  Mr. 
Thacher,  also  aided  by  reading  and  considering  the  confession 
of  one  Wilham  Riggin,  that  neither  Wilham  Branson  nor  Mrs. 
WiUiam  Booth  are  guilty  of  the  murder  of  William  Booth.  The 
report,  as  prepared  by  Mr.  Thacher,  is  so  complete  in  detail,  and 
so  well  analyzes  the  facts  that  I  suggest  that  it  be  made  the  basis 
of  any  future  action  by  the  committee  in  presenting  the  matter 
to  the  Governor.  Mr.  Thacher  has  devoted  considerable  time 
and  study  to  this  case,  and,  in  my  judgment,  he  is  correct  in  his 
deductions. 

Respectfully  submitted, 

Frank  S.  Grant. 


Chapter  VI. 
THE  MURDER  OF  MRS.  DAISY  WEHRMAN  AND  HER  CHILD 

There  is  a  little  hamlet,  five  or  six  miles  in  a  westerly  direc- 
tion from  Scappoose,  Columbia  County,  Oregon,  which  is  known 
as  Schnitzcrville.  In  1911  there  were  possibly  a  dozen  families 
living  within  a  radius  of  a  mile.  There  was  no  local  postoffice 
and  the  neighbors  brought  the  mail  for  each  other  from  the  post- 
office  at  Scappoose  and  placed  it  in  a  box  at  the  cross-roads. 
There  was  a  logging  railroad  with  a  siding  half  a  mile  away  and 
the  neighbors  used  the  track  in  walking  to  and  from  Scappoose. 
The  country  is  broken  and  the  wagon  roads,  which  are  more  or 
less  impassable  in  the  rainy  season,  wind  around  the  hills  and 
through  occasional  stretches  of  timber. 

Several  families  from  Portland  had  undertaken  to  make 
homes  here  and  had  begun  to  build  small  houses  and  to  cultivate 
little  patches  of  ground.  Among  the  number  were  two  bach- 
elors, Mr.  Riley  and  Mr.  Hassen;  Mr.  John  Arthur  Pender  and 
his  wife,  and  Mr.  Frank  Wehrman  and  his  wife  and  little  boy, 
Harold,  four  years  old.  Mr.  Pender  and  his  wife  were  living  in 
a  tent  until  they  could  build  them  a  house  and  were  engaged  in 
raising  ducks  and  chickens  and  geese.  Messrs.  Riley  and  Hassen 
had  a  cabin  close  by,  but  they  were  at  work  in  Portland  and 
spent  only  Sundays  and  holidays  at  their  little  place  in  Schnitzcr- 
ville. Mr.  Frank  Wehrman  and  his  wife  had  purchased  a  few 
acres  a  mile  away  to  the  southwest  and  had  built  a  small  house. 
Mr.  Wehrman  was  a  baker  and  worked  in  a  bakery  in  Portland 
but  came  home  Saturday  nights  to  spend  Sunday.  Mrs.  Wehr- 
man and  her  little  four-year-old  boy,  Harold,  spent  all  their  time 
in  the  new  home.  There  were  other  neighbors,  making  a  small 
community  with  more  or  less  common  interests. 

This  part  of  Columbia  County  is  an  old  but  rather  sparsely 
settled  section  and  was  originally  covered  with  heavy  timber. 

Among  the  old  settlers  is  G.  H.  Sierks,  who  lived  with  his  wife 
and  three  children  about  half  a  mile  from  the  Wehrman's  in  an 
opposite  direction  from  Schnitzcrville.  The  oldest  of  the  chil- 
dren was  a  young  man  named  John  G.  H.  Sierks,  who  was  nearly 
twenty-one  years  old  at  this  time.  John  was  feeble-minded  and 
vicious  in  his  habits  and  showed  such  marked  homicidal  tenden- 
cies that  all  the  family  lived  in  fear  of  what  he  would  attempt 
next.     His  father  has  told  the  story  of  his  attempts  to  kill  him 


46  Why  Some  Men  Kill 

and  different  members  of  the  family  when  he  was  thwarted  or 
angry.  Two  years  later,  on  his  father's  complaint,  John  was  com- 
mitted to  the  institution  for  the  insane  where  the  records  show 
that  he  was  regarded  as  a  moral  imbecile. 

In  the  summer  of  1911,  John  G.  H.  Sierks  was  at  work  on  a 
farm  in  Washington  County,  about  twenty  miles  from  his 
father's  home  in  Columbia  County,  going  home  for  occasional 
visits.  This  was  the  setting  of  surrounding  circumstances  when 
on  September  6,  1911,  Mrs.  G.  H.  Sierks  and  her  daughter,  Lena, 
walked  to  Scappoose  and  brought  word  to  the  authorities  that 
something  had  happened  in  the  little  house  where  Mrs.  Frank 
Wehrman  and  her  child  were  living  while  Mr.  Wehrman  was 
at  his  work  in  Portland.  Mr.  Wehrman  had  been  at  home  the 
week  before  but  had  left  for  Portland  Sunday  afternoon.  This 
was  Wednesday  that  Mrs.  Sierks  brought  news  of  a  tragedy,  for 
she  had  found  on  Tuesday,  she  said,  that  the  Wehrman  house 
was  padlocked  on  the  outside  and  that  a  pool  of  blood  had 
dripped  from  the  inside  of  the  house  to  the  ground  and  that  she 
and  her  daughter  had  looked  through  the  window  and  saw  Mrs. 
Wehrman's  body,  with  her  limbs  bare,  and  hanging  over  the  side 
of  the  bed,  her  feet  (with  shoes  and  rubbers  on)  touching  the 
floor.  This  information  Mrs.  Sierks  admitted  she  had  kept  to 
herself  twenty-four  hours  before  going  to  Scappoose  to  tell  her 
husband,  who  was  at  work  there  as  a  carpenter.  (The  Sierks 
family  said  that  John  Sierks  was  not  at  home,  but  in  1916  Lena 
Sierks,  John's  sister,  said  that  John  was  at  home  a  couple  of  days 
before  they  found  Mrs.  Wehrman's  dead  body.)  Mrs.  Wehrman 
was  dead,  the  sheriff  discovered,  with  her  four-year-old  child 
lying  dead  in  her  arms.  Both  mother  and  child  had  been  most 
brutally  murdered  and  the  cabin  locked  with  a  padlock  on  the 
outside  to  conceal  the  tragedy.  The  physicians  testified  that  the 
woman  and  the  child  had  been  dead  two  or  three  days  when  the 
bodies  were  discovered. 

There  were  no  clues  to  the  double  murder  except  that  three 
shots  had  been  fired  into  each  body  with  a  thirty-eight  caliber 
Colts  revolver,  which  was  held  so  close  that  the  wounds  were 
badly  powder  burned,  and  a  hatchet  had  been  used  on  Mrs. 
Wehrman's  head. 

As  the  result  of  a  two-year  struggle  to  convict  Mr.  Pender  of 
this  crime,  he  was  finally  found  guilty  of  murder  in  the  first 
degree  and  sentenced  to  be  hung,  though  he  did  not  own  a  Colts 
revolver  and  there  was  no  evidence  to  show  that  he  was  nearer 


The  Wehrman  Murder  47 

than  a  mile  from  the  Wehrman  cabin  when  the  murder  was  com- 
mitted. The  jury  could  not  agree  at  the  first  trial,  nine  months 
after  the  murder,  but  two  years  after  the  murder  Mr,  Pender  was 
convicted.  In  1914  his  sentence  was  commuted  to  life  imprison- 
ment. 

THEORY  OF  PROSECUTION 

There  was  a  newspaper  in  its  wrapper  and  a  small  unopened 
package  containing  a  curtain  made  out  of  a  flour  sack,  which 
had  been  taken  to  the  Wehrman  cabin  by  someone  from  an 
improvised  mail  box  at  Schnitzerville  and  had  not  been  opened 
at  the  time  the  bodies  were  found.  Mr.  Wehrman  testified  at 
the  preliminary  hearing  soon  after  the  murder  that  the  package 
was  at  the  house  before  he  left  for  Portland  on  Sunday  after- 
noon, September  3,  but  no  question  was  asked  about  the  news- 
paper. It  was  the  theory  of  the  prosecution  that  Mr.  Pender 
broke  into  Riley  and  Hassen's  cabin  close  to  his  tent  house  after 
or  about  6  P.  M.,  Monday  evening,  September  4,  and  broke  open 
the  trunk  and  took  the  Colts  revolver  and  visited  Mrs.  Wehrman, 
taking  her  mail  from  the  neighborhood  box  and  the  paper  from 
the  post  office  at  Scappoose,  and  made  improper  proposals  to 
Mrs.  Wehrman,  and  upon  her  refusal  went  into  an  insane  rage 
and  fired  three  shots  into  her  body  and  three  shots  into  her 
child's  body,  holding  the  revolver  so  close  that  the  wounds  were 
badlj'  powder  burned,  and  then  took  the  hatchet  and  chopped 
the  woman's  head  open.  Her  body  was  left  partially  disrobed 
with  the  bare  limbs  hanging  over  the  edge  of  the  bed.  The 
door  was  then  padlocked  on  the  outside  and  the  tragedy  awaited 
discoveiy  for  several  days. 

There  was  no  proof  that  Pender  stole  the  revolver  and  later 
returned  it,  or  that  anyone  stole  it.  Riley  and  Hassen  said  that 
their  cabin  had  been  broken  into  and  the  trunk  opened  but  they 
were  contradictory  in  their  testimony  at  the  different  trials  as 
to  whether  they  discovered  that  the  cabin  had  been  broken  into 
"before"  or  "after"  September  10.  They  worked  in  Portland  and 
visited  the  cabin  on  Sundays.  They  were  also  contradictory  as 
to  whether  the  revolver  was  loaded  when  placed  in  the  trunk.  In 
fact,  there  was  no  testimony  about  the  revolver  with  any  direct 
bearing  on  the  crime  except  that  the  Colts  revolver  bullets  which 
killed  Mrs.  Wehrman  and  her  child  were  scratched,  and  it  was 
attempted  to  be  shown  that  the  revolver  in  Riley  and  Hassen's 
trunk,  which  was  a  Colt,  had  gas  pits  in  the  barrel  which  would 


48  Why  Some  Men  Kill 

scratch  a  bullet  in  a  similar  manner.  It  was  also  testified  to  by 
some  witnesses  that  Pender's  face  was  scratched  though  other 
witnesses  had  no  recollection  of  this.  There  was  foreign  matter 
found  under  the  finger  nails  of  Mrs.  Wehrman's  hands  and  some 
brown  hairs  in  her  fingers.     Pender's  hair  is  black. 

It  was  also  testified  to  that  Pender  on  a  certain  day  had  not 
spoken  to  Mrs.  Wehrman  from  which  the  inference  was  drawn 
that  he  had  previously  insulted  her.  Finally  the  stories  were 
circulated  outside  of  court  that  Pender  was  a  Sadie  and  had 
boasted  of  mistreating  Filipino  girls  and  then  killing  them  when 
he  was  in  the  army. 

On  this  testimony  Mr.  Pender  was  convicted  two  years  after 
the  murder  and  sentenced  to  be  hung.  To  show  how  intelligent 
men  may  be  carried  away  by  their  horror  of  an  awful  crime  I 
will  quote  from  the  opinion  of  the  Supreme  Court  of  Oregon 
affirming  the  death  sentence. 

Referring  to  the  hopelessly  contradictory  testimony  as  to 
whether  Pender  got  the  Wehrman  paper  in  the  post  office  on 
Monday,  September  4,  Justice  Ramsey,  who  wrote  the  opinion, 
said  it  "tends  to  connect  the  defendant  with  the  Iowa  paper," 
etc.  He  then  offers  a  theory  as  to  what  Mr.  Pender  did  which 
would  have  been  proper  for  the  prosecuting  attorney,  but  is  in- 
conceivable for  a  supreme  court  review  and  opinion.  "He  (Pen- 
der) may  have  taken  the  Bates  package  and  have  kept  it  until 
he  obtained  the  Iowa  paper  the  next  day,  and  he  may  have  taken 
the  package  and  the  paper  to  the  Wehrman  cabin  on  Monday 
night  as  an  excuse  for  making  a  call  on  Mrs.  Wehrman,  and  the 
murder  may  have  been  committed  immediately  thereafter."  Jus- 
tice Ramsey  even  went  so  far  as  to  carelessly  misquote  testimony 
to  sustain  a  preconceived  opinion. 

THE  STOLEN   REVOLVER 

It  was  the  theory  of  the  prosecution  that  Pender  stole  a  re- 
volver from  a  locked  trunk  in  Riley  and  Hassen's  cabin  on  Labor 
Day  evening  after  5:30  or  6  o'clock  and  used  it  to  commit  this 
murder.  Riley  and  Hassen  were  at  home  Sunday  and  on  Mon- 
day until  5:30  or  6  o'clock  when  they  left  for  Portland. 

Justice  Ramsey  says  of  this  matter:  "A  day  or  two  before 
the  murder  Riley  and  Hassen  went  away  and  locked  the  cabin. 
This  pistol  was  in  the  trunk  in  the  cabin,  and  it  was  not  loaded 
when  they  left  the  cabin,  and  the  trunk  was  locked.  Some  weeks 
before  the  murder  the  defendant  had  this  pistol  borrowed  to 


The  Wehrman  Murder  49 

shooi  wild  animals  that  bothered  his  chickens.  He  had  it  two 
or  three  weeks,  and  returned  it  to  Mr.  Riley. 

"A  short  time  before  the  murder  the  defendant  borrowed  the 
key  of  the  cabin  and  had  it  for  a  short  time,  and  a  person,  vis- 
iting at  his  tents,  slept  in  said  cabin.  He  returned  the  key  to 
the  owners  of  the  cabin  a  short  time  before  the  murder." 

Justice  Ramsey  also  says:  "The  evidence  tends  to  show  that 
when  Riley  and  Hassen  locked  this  trunk  and  the  cabin  and 
went  away,  the  pistol  was  in  the  trunk  and  unloaded.  Nothing 
that  had  been  in  the  trunk  was  missing,  but  the  pistol  was  loaded 
when  the  sheriff  found  it.  This  fact  tends  to  prove  that  someone 
had  been  using  the  pistol  and  had  returned  it  loaded." 

As  a  matter  of  fact  Riley  and  Hassen  did  not  go  away  a  day 
or  two  before  the  murder  and  no  one  says  that  they  did  except 
Justice  Ramsey.  They  were  at  home  on  Sunday  and  Monday 
and  locked  their  cabin  Monday  night  about  5:30  and  went  away. 

As  to  the  revolver  being  loaned  to  Pender  some  weeks  before 
the  murder  to  shoot  wild  animals  there  is  no  evidence  to  show 
whether  it  was  some  weeks  or  some  months  before  the  murder 
that  Pender  had  the  revolver.  This  is  referred  to  on  pages  332, 
350,  351,  365  and  366  of  the  transcript.  Justice  Ramsey's  state- 
ment is  altogether  gratuitous. 

His  statement  that  Pender  borrowed  the  key  to  Riley  and 
Hassen's  cabin  a  short  time  before  the  murder  is  in  direct  oppo- 
sition to  the  testimony.  On  pages  333  and  365  is  the  testimony. 
On  page  365  Riley  said  he  loaned  the  key  to  Pender  once  "a 
long  time  before  the  murder."  On  pages  117-118  of  the  transcript 
of  the  first  trial  Riley  said  the  key  to  the  cabin  was  loaned  in 
the  spring  to  Pender.  The  murder  occurred  in  September.  Jus- 
tice Ramsey  has  misquoted  this  testimony  changing  "a  long  time 
before  the  murder"  to  a  "short  time  before  the  murder." 

The  opinion  of  the  supreme  court  affirming  Pender's  death 
sentence  has  a  number  of  entirely  inaccurate  stateinents  like 
the  above,  but  there  is  this  to  be  said  of  the  members  of  the 
supreme  court,  and  that  is  that  several  of  them  who  signed  this 
opinion  were  bound  by  ties  of  personal  interest  and  association 
to  St.  Helens  and  Columbia  County.  The  sentiment  in  Columbia 
County  in  regard  to  this  murder  was  very  bitter,  and  public  opin- 
ion demanded  that  somebody  should  be  punished  for  it. 


Chapter  VII. 
THE  CRIME  INDICATES  THE  CRIMINAL 

Comparatively  little  attention  is  paid  by  detectives  and  sher- 
iffs to  the  minor  details  of  a  murder,  though  these  often  reveal 
the  character  of  the  man  who  committed  it.  Sheriffs  are  too 
apt  to  be  elected  to  office  because  they  are  popular  and  good 
"hand-shakers"  and  are  more  or  less  wise  politicians.  These 
pleasant  qualities  are  very  necessary  of  course,  but  they  don't 
include  any  knowledge  of  feeble-minded  or  insane  persons  who 
have  homicidal  tendencies.  Very  obviously  in  murder  cases 
where  there  is  no  direct  evidence  but  only  what  is  called  "cir- 
cumstantial evidence,"  persons  who  make  a  business  of  detecting 
crime  should  be  fully  informed  of  the  characteristics  of  all  kinds 
of  criminals.  For  instance,  the  ordinary  murderer  is  completely 
satisfied  when  he  kills  his  victim.  He  does  not  continue  to  assault 
the  dead  body  the  way  a  baboon  or  wild  animal  would  do.  We 
do  know,  however,  that  half-witted  men  sometimes  commit  mur- 
der and  that  they  act  like  wild  animals.  Dr.  Goddard  in  his 
"Criminal  Imbecile"  tells  of  a  weak-minded  young  man  who 
killed  his  school  teacher.  He  stabbed  her  body  24  times  in  order 
to  make  a  "good  job  of  it." 

In  this  Columbia  County  murder  Mrs.  Wehrman's  body  was 
shot  three  times,  the  revolver  being  held  so  close  that  each  time 
the  flesh  was  badly  powder  burned.  The  doctor  said  any  one 
of  these  shots  would  have  killed  her.  Then  the  murderer  picked 
up  a  hatchet  and  smashed  her  skull  with  it.  The  body  of  the 
child  was  also  shot  three  times  and  the  wounds  were  all  badly 
powder  burned.  Any  one  of  the  shots  would  have  killed  the 
child. 

Here  is  circumstantial  evidence  of  genuine  value  that  a  feeble- 
minded man  killed  Mrs.  Wehrman.  Notice  how  this  circum- 
stantial evidence  coincides  with  the  facts.  The  Wehrmans  had 
nearer  neighbors  than  the  Fenders,  and  in  one  of  them,  the  G.  H. 
Sierks  family,  there  was  a  defective  and  thoroughly  vicious 
young  man  by  the  name  of  John  Sierks.  This  young  man  accord- 
ing to  his  own  father  had  homicidal  tendencies  when  he  was 
opposed  and  had  tried  on  different  occasions  to  kill  different 
members  of  his  own  family.  He  had  a  weakness  for  liquor  and 
guns  and  his  sex  habits  were  vicious.    His  ambition  in  life  was 

once  expressed  by  him  in  a  desire  to  kill  the  old  son  of , 

his  father,  and  then  he  could  get  rid  of  the  rest  of  the  family  and 


The  Wehrman  Murder  51 

inherit  the  property  and  get  married  and  be  somebody.  He  had 
failed  both  in  poisoning  his  brother  and  in  killing  his  father 
and  was  away  from  home  and  in  Washington  County,  where  he 
was  at  work  for  Louie  Schmidt  near  Helvetia,  However,  he  went 
home  frequently  and  his  sister  Lena  Sierks,  who  was  removed 
from  her  father's  home  in  the  spring  of  1916  upon  the  request  of 
citizens  and  officials  in  Scappoose,  has  volunteered  the  informa- 
tion, and  repeated  it,  that  her  brother  John  Sierks  was  at  home 
two  days  before  the  Sierks  family  discovered  the  dead  bodies 
of  their  neighbors,  Mrs.  Wehrman  and  her  child.  For  it  was 
the  Sierks  family  who  discovered  the  murder  and  who  kept  it 
to  themselves  twenty-four  hours,  according  to  Mrs.  Sierks'  tes- 
timony at  the  trials  of  John  Pender  for  murder.  Here  are  her 
words:  "It  was  the  second  (?)  of  September  when  I  went  to 
the  Wehrman's  house,  and  the  door  was  locked  with  a  padlock; 
I  thought  she  was  gone.  I  wanted  to  see  what  time  it  was,  and 
we  looked  into  the  wdndow,  my  daughter  and  L  We  saw  Mrs. 
Wehrman  lying  on  the  bed;  she  was  bare,  her  legs  were  bare. 
I  went  around  the  house.  I  saw  some  blood  there,  but  I  did  not 
know  where  the  blood  came  from,  so  I  went  home.  I  thought 
she  was  asleep.  In  the  night  I  worried.  I  didn't  know  how  it 
came  the  door  w^as  locked  from  the  outside;  I  worried  all  night 
about  the  padlock.  The  next  morning  my  daughter  said,  "We 
shall  go  back  again."  We  went  back.  We  saw  the  door  was 
locked;  we  looked  into  the  window  again,  and  we  saw  her  lying 
the  same  way  that  she  did  on  Tuesday.  So  I  went  around  the 
house  alone,  and  I  saw  blood  there,  and  then  we  went  home 
and  notified  Scappoose  that  something  had  happened  there,  and 
notified  the  sheriff,  and  Mr.  Grant  he  came  out  there  and  looked 
after  it." 

The  idea  that  John's  mother  could  imagine  that  Mrs.  Wehr- 
man was  asleep  with  her  body  partially  naked  hanging  over  the 
bed  so  that  the  feet  touched  the  floor,  with  the  window  blind 
up  so  that  outsiders  could  look  in  and  tell  the  time  by  the  clock, 
is  foolish.  Then  to  say  that  she  saw  blood  on  the  ground  by  the 
house  and  that  she  did  not  know  where  it  came  from,  adding, 
"So  I  went  home;  I  thought  she  was  asleep,"  is  evidently  untrue. 
Mrs.  Sierks  practically  admits  the  untruth  by  saying  she  went 
home  and  worried  all  night  about  the  padlock  which  locked  the 
door  on  the  outside,  and  the  next  day  went  back  and  looked  at 
the  body  and  padlock  and  the  blood  and  then  "notified  Scap- 
poose that  something  had  happened  there." 


52  Why  Some  Men  Kill 

Such  a  terrible  murder  must  have  made  a  great  impression 
on  all  the  Sierks  family  and  it  is  natural  that  John's  childlike 
mind  remembered  and  repeated  what  his  mother  said  to  his 
sister  when  they  thought  he  was  asleep — "John  did  that."  They 
knew  from  experience  that  John  was  quite  capable  of  murder. 

John  Sierks  was  placed  in  the  hospital  for  the  insane  by  his 
family  before  Mr.  Pender's  second  trial  in  1913.  John  explained 
that  he  was  in  the  hospital  because  his  family  thought  he  killed 
Mrs.  Wehrman  and  said  he  heard  his  mother  say  to  his  sister 
Lena,  "John  did  that." 

About  the  first  of  January,  1915,  John  made  a  confession  of 
the  murder  and  it  is  given  in  full  in  Appendix  B.  After  he  con- 
fessed he  said  to  a  reporter  that  after  he  got  back  to  Louie 
Schmidt's,  near  Helvetia,  he  wrote  home  that  he  saw  in  the  pa- 
pers that  his  mother  committed  the  crime,  and  that  he  would 
bet  that  letter  was  around  their  home  now.  As  it  happened 
this  was  printed  in  a  Portland  newspaper,  and  the  next  day  John 
Sierks'  father  appeared  in  Salem  with  this  letter  but  the  father 
said  John  meant  "discovered"  instead  of  "committed."  Mr.  Sierks 
had  corrected  the  letter  to  read  "discovered." 

John  told  in  his  confession  of  going  from  the  neighborhood 
of  Hillsboro  to  Scappoose  on  the  evening  of  Labor  Day,  1911, 
getting  a  revolver  from  Riley  and  Hassen's  cabin  in  Schnitzer- 
ville  and  killing  Mrs.  Wehrman  and  her  child  and  then  going 
back  to  Hillsboro  the  same  night.  This  seemed  a  difficult  feat, 
but  two  years  later  John's  sister  Lena  explained  that  John  was 
at  home  on  a  visit  for  a  couple  of  days  just  before  they  found 
Mrs.  Wehrman's  dead  body.  He  was  at  home  at  the  time  of 
the  murder  but  did  not  go  and  come  as  he  said  he  did. 

John  said  Mrs.  Wehrman  fired  her  revolver  at  him  as  he 
went  into  the  cabin.  The  sheriff  testified  at  Mr.  Pender's  trial 
that  he  found  a  .32  caliber  bullet  in  the  wall  to  the  right  of  the 
door.    Mrs.  Wehrman  had  a  .32  caliber  revolver. 

John  said  he  found  a  hatchet  in  the  wood  box  and  "chopped 
and  split  her  skull."  The  testimony  of  Mr.  Wehrman  was  to 
the  effect  that  the  hatchet  was  kept  in  the  wood  box. 

John  said  he  took  off  an  undergarment  from  Mrs.  Wehrman. 
This  was  done  by  some  one.  John  said  he  washed  his  hands  in 
the  basin  and  padlocked  the  door  on  the  outside.  These  things 
were  done  according  to  the  testimony. 

John  said  he  buried  Mrs.  Wehrman's  revolver.  This  has  not 
been  verified,  but  the  revolver  has  disappeared. 


The  Wehrman  Murder  53 

After  John's  confession  his  father  wrote  him  he  had  dis- 
graced the  family  and  that  they  wouUl  go  away.  John  wrote  him 
an  answer  without  anyone's  knowledge  and  said  he  was  sorry 
they  had  given  him  up,  hut  that  he  killed  Mrs.  Wehrman.  Then 
when  his  father  arrived  in  Salem  John  repudiated  his  confession. 

After  John  Sierks'  confession  was  repudiated  it  was  consid- 
ered that  John  had  a  good  alihi,  as  his  employer.  Louis  Schmidt, 
thought  John  was  not  away  at  the  time  of  the  murder.  How- 
ever, two  citizens  of  Washington  County  told  me  that  John  was 
in  Holhrook  and  that  he  came  from  the  direction  of  Scappoose 
just  at  the  time  of  the  murder. 

Following  is  a  sworn  statement: 

I,  L.  Nitchman,  being  duly  sworn,  depose  and  say  that  I  live 
on  my  farm  in  Shady  Brook  School  District,  where  I  have  Hved 
about  three  years,  and  previous  to  this  time  I  lived  on  my  farm 
in  Mason  Hill  School  District,  in  Washington  County,  and  that 
I  was  living  there  during  the  years  of  1910  and  1911.  I  have 
known  John  G.  H.  Sierks  for  about  six  years.  He  came  to  my 
farm  in  Mason  Hill  about  six  years  ago  and  asked  for  work, 
and  I  gave  him  work  slashing  timber,  and  he  boarded  in  my 
family  while  working  for  us,  and  for  several  years  he  came  to 
me  at  intervals  for  work,  and  I  gave  him  work  for  short  periods, 
and  he  lived  in  my  family,  so  that  I  knew  him  well.  He  did  fair 
work  by  being  looked  after.  John  Sierks  did  some  work  for 
me  in  the  spring  of  1911,  and  on  leaving  me  I  got  him  a  job  with 
Louie  Schmidt,  whom  I  know.  It  is  about  six  miles  in  a  direct 
line  from  my  farm  on  Mason  Hill  to  Louie  Schmidt's,  and  John 
came  to  see  us  twice,  I  am  positive,  and  perhaps  three  times 
while  he  was  at  work  for  Louie  Schmidt. 

1  remember  that  John  Sierks  came  to  our  farm  at  just  about 
the  time  of  the  murder  of  Mrs.  Wehrman,  but  whether  it  was 
before  or  after  I  cannot  say,  and  said  that  he  came  from  Hol- 
brook  and  had  been  in  Scappoose.  This  was  either  on  a  Sunday 
or  a  holiday,  for  I  was  not  at  work  in  the  field  on  the  farm  at 
the  time.  It  was  late  in  the  afternoon  when  John  came  and  he 
sat  with  his  head  in  his  hands  and  cried  and  cried  until  my  wife 
was  frightened  and  called  me  in  from  doing  my  chores.  She 
said  John  was  in  trouble  and  said  among  other  things,  "I  am 
so  sorn>'."  I  told  my  wife  that  John  was  drunk.  He  was  telling 
how  harsh  his  family  was  to  him.  John  said  that  his  watch  was 
broken,  and  that  he  had  been  in  a  fight,  and  I  think  that  his 
face  was  scratched. 


54  Why  Some  Men  Kill 

In  regard  to  the  Wehrman  murder,  I  think  that  John  told  us 
about  it  before  we  saw  the  news  in  the  papers.  I  remember  his 
saying  something  about  its  being  lucky  that  he  was  not  at  home 
or  they  would  have  blamed  him  for  it. 

After  John  left  Louie  Schmidt  in  the  fall  of  1911,  he  came  to 
my  place  for  a  short  time  and  then  he  went  to  work  for  one  of 
my  neighbors,  a  Mr.  Dean. 

It  is  impossible  to  remember  exactly  as  to  the  dates  of  John's 
visits,  but  I  am  positive  that  he  did  come  to  visit  us  while  he 
was  at  work  for  Louie  Schmidt,  and  at  about  the  time  of  the 
murder  he  came  and  I  thought  he  was  drunk  because  he  was 
crying  constantly,  which  was  a  thing  he  had  never  done  before 
while  at  my  house,  and  said  he  came  from  Holbrook  and  had 
been  in  a  fight.  It  is  my  recollection  that  John  slept  in  the  barn 
that  night,  but  of  this  I  cannot  be  positive.  It  is  also  mj'^  recollec- 
tion that  John  told  us  about  the  murder  before  we  saw  it  in  the 
papers.  L.  Nitchman. 

December  2,  1915. 

W.  C.  Hunt,  a  blacksmith  of  Holbrook  at  the  time  of  the 
Wehrman  murder,  had  employed  John  Sierks,  and  John  stopped 
at  his  place  in  going  and  coming  from  Washington  County.  Mr. 
Hunt  says  that  just  about  the  time  of  the  murder  of  Mrs.  Wehr- 
man and  her  little  boy,  John  Sierks  came  on  foot  from  the  direc- 
tion of  Scappoose  with  the  bundle  of  blankets  and  stuff  that  he 
usually  carried  when  going  back  and  forth,  and  stopped  at  Mr. 
Hunt's  for  dinner,  Mr.  Hunt  does  not  remember  whether  it  was 
Sunday  or  not,  but  he  does  remember  that  he  was  not  at  work 
in  his  shop.  He  noticed  that  John's  face  had  some  fresh  scratches 
as  if  he  had  been  through  some  briars,  and  he  asked  him,  "Who 
peeled  j'^our  face?"  John  replied  that  he  had  been  in  a  fight  with 
a  man  in  Dutch  Canyon,  and  that  he  had  his  watch  broken  in 
the  fight." 

Mrs.  Hunt  also  remembered  of  John  coming  from  Scappoose 
on  Labor  Day,  as  she  believes,  and  stopping  for  dinner  on  his 
way  to  Mr.  Nitchman's,  John  was  scratched  up  and  told  of  being 
in  a  fight  and  of  having  his  watch  broken. 

In  May  of  1916  three  of  John's  former  employers,  L.  Nitch- 
man, W.  C.  Hunt  and  Walter  Dean,  visited  John  in  the  hospital. 
John  told  them  of  dates  he  went  to  work  for  each  one  and  spoke 
of  stopping  at  Mr.  Hunt's  for  dinner  on  Labor  Day,  September 
4,  1911,  on  his  way  back  to  Washington  County  from  his  home 


The  Wehrmaii  Murder  55 

near  Scappoose,  and  of  eating  supper  the  same  day  at  Nitch- 
man's. 

On  the  23rd  day  of  June,  191G,  when  I  took  Lena  Sierks  to 
see  her  brother,  the  matter  of  John's  memory  was  mentioned 
and  he  gave  the  dates  he  went  to  work  for  his  different  employ- 
ers and  spoke  of  being  in  Scappoose  at  his  father's  on  Sunday 
and  the  following  Monday,  Labor  Day,  September  4,  1911,  and 
of  stopping  at  Mr.  Hunt's  at  Holbrook  and  at  Mr.  Nitchman's  at 
Mason  Hill  on  September  4. 

I  asked  Lena  Sierks  if  it  was  true  that  John  was  at  home  at 
the  time  he  said  he  was  and  she  replied  that  he  was  at  home 
a  couple  of  days  before  they  found  the  dead  body  of  Mrs.  Wehr- 
man,  and  that  he  was  also  at  home  two  weeks  later. 

John  Sierks  told  us  of  being  in  a  fight  in  Dutch  Canyon 
(where  the  Sierks  and  Wehrmans  lived)  and  of  getting  badly 
scratched  up  on  the  occasion  of  his  visit  on  Sunday  and  Labor 
Day,  September  3  and  4,  1911. 

I  asked  Lena  Sierks  if  it  was  true  and  she  said  that  John  came 
home  with  the  side  of  his  face  badly  scratched  and  also  the  back 
of  his  neck  scratched  and  she  showed  us  where  the  scratches 
were. 

I  made  no  allusion  to  the  murder  and  that  subject  was  not 
discussed. 

On  July  15,  1916,  at  the  Boys'  and  Girls'  Aid  Society  in  Port- 
land, Mr.  John  F.  Logan,  with  his  stenographer,  talked  with  Lena 
Sierks,  Mrs.  Harriet  H.  Heller  and  I  being  present. 

Lena  Sierks  said  to  us  repeatedly  that  John  was  at  home  a 
couple  of  days  before  they  found  Mrs.  Wehrman's  body  and 
also  two  weeks  later. 

This  destroys  the  claim  that  John  never  left  Louie  Schmidt's 
all  summer  to  go  home.  It  also  establishes  the 'fact  beyond  a 
reasonable  doubt  that  John  Sierks  was  at  his  father's  home  about 
half  a  mile  from  the  Wehrman  cabin  on  the  day  when  Mrs. 
Wehrman  and  her  child  were  killed.  The  Sierks  family  con- 
cealed this  fact  for  several  years,  but  the  truth  came  out  in  1916 
when  Lena  Sierks  left  home  and  went  to  Portland  to  live.  The 
reasons  for  the  concealment  can  be  easily  imagined. 


Chapter  VIII 
THE  HAIR  FOUND  IN  MRS.  WEHRMAN'S  DEAD  HANDS 

When  Mrs.  Wehrman's  body  was  examined  by  a  physician 
it  was  found  that  there  was  considerable  foreign  matter  under 
her  finger  nails.  There  was  no  microscopic  examination  made  of 
this  foreign  matter  but  it  is  assumed,  and  probably  correctly, 
that  Mrs.  Weshman  endeavored  to  fight  off  the  man  who  killed 
her  and  that  she  scratched  his  face  and  head.  Some  brown  hair 
was  also  found  clutched  in  her  dead  hands.  There  was  one 
brown  hair  found  in  one  hand  and  a  little  tuft  of  brown  hair 
of  a  hghter  color  found  in  the  other  hand. 

It  was  assumed,  without  any  proof  of  course,  that  Mrs.  Wehr- 
man,  after  she  had  scratched  the  murderer's  face  and  got  the  for- 
eign matter  under  her  finger  nails,  proceeded  to  pull  a  hair  out 
of  her  own  head  with  one  hand  and  then  to  pull  several  hairs 
out  of  her  child's  head  with  the  other  hand  just  before  she  died. 

Arthur  Pender  had  black  hair,  while  the  hair  found  in  Mrs. 
Wehrman's  hands  was  brown.  Examination  under  the  micro- 
scope by  Dr.  J.  Allen  Gilbert  gave  the  following  results  in  the 
matter  of  the  hair: 

The  hair  found  in  Mrs.  Wehrman's  hand  looked  very  much 
like  the  hair  out  of  John  Sierks'  head.  However,  the  hair  cut 
from  Mr.  Wehrman's  head  and  from  Mrs.  Wehrman's  head  did 
not  differ  in  any  noticeable  fashion  from  the  hair  found  in  Mrs. 
Wehrman's  left  hand,  so  the  results  of  the  examination  were 
entirely  negative.  They  did  not  prove  anything  either  way.  The 
hair  found  in  Mrs.  Wehrman's  right  hand,  which  was  lighter  in 
color,  appeared  to  be  much  like  the  hair  of  Mrs.  Wehrman's 
little  boy. 

Later  I  had  the  professor  of  biology  at  Reed  College  look  at 
these  slides  through  his  microscope,  and  he  expressed  the  opinion 
that  the  hair  cut  from  Mrs.  Wehrman's  head  was  darker  than 
the  hair  found  in  her  hand. 

I  was  told  that  the  only  way  to  make  a  satisfactory  test  would 
be  to  have  two  microscopes  arranged  with  a  reflection  of  glasses 
so  that  one  could  look  through  the  aperture  for  the  eye  and  see 
the  two  samples  in  the  two  microscopes  at  the  same  time.  This 
is  called,  I  believe,  a  comparison  microscope,  but  nothing  of  the 
kind  is  to  be  found  in  Portland.  It  is  impossible  to  look  at  one 
sample  of  hair  and  change  the  shde  and  notice  small  differences. 


The  Wehrmon  Murder  57 

The  net  result  of  this  examination  of  the  hair  simply  proved 
that  the  hair  found  in  the  dead  woman's  hands  was  not  Mr. 
Pender's.  Beyond  that  the  results  were  negative  and  neither 
proved  nor  disproved  that  the  hair  was  John  Sierks'.  It  looked 
like  John  Sierks'  hair  and  that  is  all  that  can  be  said.  As  for 
the  fine  hair  of  lighter  color  in  Mrs.  Wehrman's  right  hand,  I 
am  informed  by  reliable  witnesses  that  John  Sierks  allowed  his 
hair  to  grow  long  and  that  he  had  an  unusual  growth  on  his 
neck.  The  latter  fact  I  know  to  be  true.  When  John  Sierks 
lived  out  of  doors  his  hair  bleached  to  a  light  color  in  the  sun 
of  the  summer,  and  it  is  possible  that  this  fine  hair  of  light 
color  was  pulled  from  the  neck  of  the  man  who  shot  her  to 
death,  for  the  powder  burns  proved  that  the  murderer  was  close 
to  her  and  held  the  revolver  against  her  body. 

The  following  curious  information  was  volunteered  by  N.  E. 
Persinger,  an  intelligent  young  man  in  Washington  County : 

"I,  N.  E.  Persinger,  being  sworn,  depose  and  say  that  I  live  in 
Shadybrook,  Washington  County,  and  that  in  September,  1911, 
I  lived  at  my  father's  place  in  Mason  Hill,  Washington  County. 
I  knew  John  G.  H.  Sierks  at  the  time  he  worked  for  L.  Nitchman 
and  during  the  following  two  years.  He  used  to  come  to  our 
house  occasionally  and  I  went  out  hunting  with  him  on  one  occa- 
sion and  I  became  well  acquainted  with  him. 

Some  days  after  the  murder  of  Mrs.  Wehrman  and  her  little 
boy  at  Scappoose  early  in  September,  1911,  John  Sierks  was 
talking  to  me  about  the  murder  and  said  "Pender  did  it;  I  know 
he  did,"  and  he  cursed  Pender  and  said  he  would  get  him  for  it. 
About  the  time  of  this  conversation  John  Sierks  asked  me  if 
hair  would  grow  in  again  and  took  off  his  hat  and  showed  me 
a  small  spot  on  the  top  of  his  head  where  the  hair  had  been 
pulled  out  by  the  roots.  He  was  quite  anxious  to  know  whether 
the  hair  would  grow  again. 

John  Sierks  wore  his  hair  long  on  his  neck  and  it  was  bleached 
to  a  very  much  lighter  color  than  the  hair  of  his  head. 

John  said  he  knew  Mrs.  Wehrman  well. 

N.  E.  Persinger." 

The  sworn  statement  of  Frank  Persinger  agrees  in  the  main 
points  with  his  brother's. 

THE  RECONSTRUCTED  STORY 

A  simple  way  to  analyze  the  various  facts  which  have  been 
slowly  discovered  about  John  Sierks  is  to  relate  the  main  inci- 


58  Why  Some  Men  Kill 

dents  of  his  confession  and  examine  the  details  and  see  if  it  will 
be  generally  corroborated  by  independent  testimony. 

John  Sierks,  who  has  the  mind  of  a  boy  of  nine  years  plus 
nearly  20  years'  experience  (Dr.  De  Busk  of  the  University  of 
Oregon  estimates  John's  mental  age  as  nine),  could  not  get  along 
at  home  nor  could  he  go  away  from  home  and  stay  without  fre- 
quent visits.  That  is  characteristic  of  weak-minded  persons.  He 
was  at  work  for  Louie  Schmidt  near  Helvetia  on  the  United 
Railways,  but  he  had  to  visit  home  often.  His  sister  Lena,  now 
that  she  is  away  from  her  father's  influence,  has  said  on  two 
occasions  that  John  was  at  home  a  couple  of  days  before  they 
found  Mrs.  Wehrman's  body  and  also  two  weeks  later. 

John  was  attracted  by  Mrs.  Wehrman  and  finding  her  alone 
on  Sunday  (after  her  husband  started  for  Portland),  he  made 
improper  proposals  to  her  probably  while  he  was  under  the  in- 
fluence of  liquor,  and  she  attempted  to  defend  herself.  She  had 
a  .32  caliber  revolver  and  John  says  she  fired  at  him  and  the 
bullet  passed  to  his  right  as  he  entered  the  door.  At  Mr.  Pender's 
trial  Sheriff  Thompson  testified  that  he  dug  a  .32  bullet  out  of 
the  wall  at  the  head  of  the  bed.  Examination  shows  that  the 
head  of  the  bed  stood  against  the  wall  to  the  right  of  the  door 
as  you  enter,  so  this  detail  is  corroborated. 

John  had  a  .38  caliber  revolver  and  advanced  on  Mrs.  Wehr- 
man and  fired  three  shots  into  her  body  after  a  struggle  with  her 
and  emptied  the  other  chambers  into  the  head  of  the  child,  hold- 
ing the  revolver  so  close  that  all  the  wounds  were  badly  powder- 
burned. 

During  the  struggle  previous  to  John's  shooting,  Mrs.  Wehr- 
man scratched  his  face  and  neck  and  pulled  his  hair  out  in  a 
vain  attempt  to  fight  him  off. 

John,  feeble-minded  fashion,  after  he  had  shot  the  woman 
to  death,  took  the  hatchet  and  broke  in  her  skull  so  as  to  be 
certain  that  he  had  done  a  good  job.  Then  he  took  off  her 
drawers  and  placed  them  under  her  and  assaulted  her.  He 
told  of  this,  and  when  he  repudiated  his  confession  he  said  he 
saw  about  the  drawers  in  the  St.  Helens  Mist.  The  paper  printed 
no  such  detail. 

The  drawers  were  found  under  Mrs.  Wehrman's  body  where 
John  said  he  placed  them. 

Then  John  washed  his  hands  in  the  basin  at  the  door,  locked 
the  door  with  the  padlock  on  the  outside  and  threw  away  the 
key. 


The  Wehrman  Murder  59 

Later  Mrs.  Sierks  said  she  was  much  troubled  at  seeing  Mrs. 
Wehrman  on  the  bed  with  her  bare  legs  hanging  over  the  edge 
and  her  feet  on  the  floor,  while  the  door  was  padlocked  on  the 
outside  and  blood  had  dripped  to  the  ground  from  the  cabin. 

John  went  home  and  the  family  saw  the  evidence  of  the 
struggle  and  the  scratches  on  his  face  and  neck  as  his  sister 
Lena  has  described.  The  family  knew  John  from  bitter  experi- 
ence— his  homicidal  tendencies  when  he  was  opposed  and  his 
lustful  inclinations.  Of  course  they  made  inquiries  and  guessed 
what  had  happened.  However,  they  were  in  no  way  responsible 
and  they  did  not  absolutely  know.  At  the  same  time  they  could 
not  stay  away  from  the  cabin  where  there  was  blood  on  the 
ground  and  a  door  locked  on  the  outside  and  a  woman  across 
a  bed  with  legs  uncovered,  but  they  professed  to  believe  that 
the  woman  was  asleep.  Finally  on  Wednesday,  as  no  one  else^ 
had  discovered  the  murder,  Mrs.  Sierks  and  Lena  went  to  Scap- 
poose  and  told  Mr.  Sierks  that  something  must  be  done.  They 
did  not  tell  anj^  of  their  neighbors  though  they  met  at  least  one 
on  their  way  to  Scappoose. 

Sometime  previous  to  the  murder,  G.  H.  Sierks  and  John  A. 
Pender  had  a  quarrel  decidedly  bitter  on  Sierks'  part.  He  wanted 
Mr.  Pender  to  sign  a  road  petition  and  Pender  declined.  On  one 
occasion  Mr.  Pender  had  a  valuable  bull  dog  belonging  to  his 
brother-in-law,  and  he  had  the  dog  fastened  near  his  tent  house 
at  Schnitzerville.  Sierks  attempted  to  make  friends  with  the 
bull  dog  and  though  Pender  warned  him  to  leave  the  dog  alone 
he  would  not.  The  dog  broke  loose  and  bit  G.  H.  Sierks,  which 
angered  him  greatly. 

On  a  later  occasion  Mr.  Sierks  came  to  Pender's  place  and 
had  his  son  John  Sierks  with  him.  At  that  time  Sierks  threatened 
to  shoot  Mr.  Pender  and  actually  pointed  his  gun  at  him,  but 
Mrs.  Pender  says  she  grabbed  the  gun  barrel  and  threw  it  up. 
She  thought  Mr.  Sierks  was  temporarily  insane.  Sierks,  however, 
did  shoot  and  kill  the  bull  dog. 


Chapter  IX 
JOHN  SIERKS'  LETTERS  ABOUT  THE  MURDER 

On  Wednesday,  September  6,  the  murder  was  discovered  and 
the  indications  were  that  it  had  been  committed  on  the  Sunday 
previous,  September  3,  and  this  was  printed  in  some  of  the  news- 
papers at  the  time. 

Nobody  knows  who  first  suggested  Mr.  Pender's  name  in  con- 
nection with  the  murder,  but  the  news  of  the  murder  came  from 
the  Sierks  family  on  Wednesday,  September  6,  and  Mrs.  Sierks 
and  Lena  admitted  their  knowledge  of  the  situation  for  one  day 
before  they  told  of  it.  This  is  suggestive  in  view  of  what  we 
now  know  about  John  Sierks  being  at  home  on  September  3  and 
4.  He  started  back  to  Washington  County  on  Monday,  Labor 
Day,  September  4,  and  stopped  at  Holbrook  and  ate  dinner  with 
Mr.  and  Mrs.  Hunt.  He  explained  his  scratched  up  condition 
by  saying  he  had  been  in  a  fight.  He  went  on  to  Mason  Hill  in 
the  afternoon  and  stopped  at  Mr.  Nitchman's,  whom  he  often 
worked  for.  He  explained  here  also  his  scratches  and  told  of 
his  broken  watch  and  then  frightened  Mrs.  Nitchman  by  break- 
ing down  and  crying  bitterly  and  exclaiming  that  he  was  so 
sorry.  Mrs.  Nitchman  called  her  husband  and  he  assured  her 
that  John  was  probably  drunk.  John  slept  that  night  in  the  barn 
and  left  early  for  Schmidt's.  This  was  on  September  5,  1911. 
On  September  8, 1911,  he  writes  the  following  letter  to  his  father: 

"September  8,  1911. 
"My  dear  father: 

Your  letter  to  the  23rd  (?)  of  September  is  received.  I  was 
glad  to  hear  from  you.  I  have  read  a  piece  in  the  paper  yes- 
terday, the  7th  of  September,  of  Mrs.  Wehrman  and  her  little 
boy  Harold,  our  nearest  neighbor  got  killed  by  a  murderer. 
They  got  shot  and  then  hacked  up  with  a  hatchet.  That  was 
an  awful  dirty  trick  whoever  done  it.  I  never  thought  a  thing 
like  that  would  happen  in  our  home.  How  is  mamma  and  the 
children  getting  along?  Are  they  still  alive?  I  will  be  out  of 
work  in  a  few  weeks  and  then  I  will  pick  up  my  clothes  and 
come  home.  I  would  be  a  damned  fool  if  I  would  want  to  do 
a  thing  like  that  to  go  and  murder  anyone  of  my  folks;  I  would 
rather  have  a  bullet  thru  my  head  before  I  would  do  a  thing 
like  that  is,  to  go  and  be  a  murderer,  liar  and  thief.  Them  things 
won't  go  at  all;  that  is  lying,  stealing  and  murder  business.    That 


The  Wehrman  Murder  61 

man  who  did  that  will  be  sure  to  find  his  grace,  it  don't  make 
any  difference  whoever  it  may  be,  he  is  not  sure  of  his  life.  He 
will  be  punished  all  of  his  life  for  that  what  he  done  today.  The 
10th  of  September,  I  read  about  him  in  another  paper  that  he 
had  fired  five  shots;  three  shots  were  fired  in  Mrs.  Wehrman 
and  two  were  fired  in  the  little  boy,  Harold,  and  that  they  were 
all  found  and  mamma,  her  name  was  also  in  both  papers  that 
she  committed  (Mr.  Sierks  says  he  ineant  to  write  discovered) 
the  crime.  That  is  too  bad  about  that  poor  woman  anyhow  that 
she  had  to  lose  her  life  on  account  of  a  misery.  Everybody  that 
read  about  her  say  that  he  will  find  the  way  into  the  pen  for 
that,  if  the  Sheriff  finds  him  they  say.  If  they  put  blood  hounds 
out  he  is  sure  they  would  soon  find  him.  I  hope  that  nothing 
like  that  will  happen  at  our  home  for  I  don't  want  to  lose  mamma 
and  the  children.  I  have  got  trouble  enough  without  that  that 
I  have  to  bear  that  something  has  happened  to  mamma  and  the 
children,  are  you?  If  I  should  happen  to  come  and  not  find 
you  there,  it  will  be  all  off  with  me. 

Well  I  must  close  for  this  time  for  news  are  running  short, 
I  remain, 

Your  loving  and  faithful  son, 

John  G.  H.  Sierks. 

R.  R.  1  box  122,  in  care  of  J.  S.  Schmidtt. 

Write  as  soon  as  possible  again  and  will  you  please  tell 
mamma  to  write  to  me  also." 

The  letter  tells  its  ow^n  story.  The  father  preserved  it  and 
over  three  years  later  when  John  confessed  that  he  did  kill  Mrs. 
Wehrman,  G.  H.  Sierks  went  to  Salem  and  took  this  letter  to 
prove  that  John  was  innocent. 

However,  John,  who  has  unusual  memory,  got  ahead  of  his 
father  and  told  a  reporter  of  the  Portland  News  about  this  letter 
and  what  he  said  in  it  and  the  News  printed  what  John  said 
about  this  letter  before  G.  H.  Sierks  arrived  in  Salem. 

The  News  account  follows: 

Portland  News,  Jan.  5,  1915. 
(Interview  with  John  Sierks.) 
"After  I  went  back  to  the  farm,  I  read  about  this  about  four 
or  five  days  afterwards.  Then  I  wrote  my  mother.  I  told  her 
that  I  had  read  in  the  papers  that  Daisy  Wehrman  and  her  boy 
had  been  killed  and  that  she  had  found  the  bodies.  I  accused 
her  of  doing  it.     That  was  only  a  blind   (here  you  could  see  a 


62  Why  Some  Men  Kill 

look  of  cunning  in  his  eyes)  because  I  didn't  want  her  to  think 
I  did  it.    I  bet  that  letter  is  in  the  house  now. 

"After  I  came  home  I  heard  my  mother  tell  my  sister  that 
she  bet  John  did  that." 

It  was  at  this  time  within  a  couple  of  weeks  after  the  murder 
that  John  consulted  N.  E.  Persinger  and  his  brother  Frank  as 
to  whether  his  hair  would  grow  in  where  it  had  been  pulled  out. 
He  also  talked  of  the  murder  and  was  violent  in  his  denuncia- 
tions of  Pender  as  the  murderer.  Mr.  Pender  was  not  arrested 
until  the  15th  of  September. 

We  know  from  Lena  Sierks,  as  well  as  John,  that  he  visited 
home  again  two  weeks  after  the  murder.  That  would  be  about 
September  17.  This  was  after  John  had  left  Louie  Schmidt  and 
had  gone  to  work  for  W.  P.  Dean.  After  the  murder,  according 
to  Hedinger  who  worked  at  Schmidt's,  John  talked  a  good  deal 
about  the  murder  and  wrote  and  received  letters  from  home 
about  it,  and  became  of  no  use  on  the  farm,  so  Mr.  Schmidt 
let  him  go  about  September  11  or  12.  On  September  14  John 
went  to  work  for  W.  P.  Dean  as  John  volunteered  from  his 
memory,  and  as  W.  P.  Dean's  account  book  shows.  Mr.  Dean 
says  that  John  was  nervous  about  something  and  always  wanted 
to  get  the  newspapers  to  read  before  anyone  else  in  the  family 
saw  them.  Dean  thought  it  was  because  the  Wehrman's  were 
neighbors. 

After  John  returned  from  his  visit  at  Scappoose  on  or  about 
September  17,  he  wrote  another  letter  to  his  father  about  the 
murder  and  about  his  scratches  and  broken  watch.  He  got  these 
scratches  before  September  4  as  we  know  from  John,  from  Lena, 
from  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Hunt  and  from  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Nitchman,  and 
he  got  them  when  he  was  at  home,  but  still  after  another  visit 
home  he  wrote  home  how  it  happened.    Here  is  the  letter: 

"Hillsboro,  Oregon,  Sept.  24,  1911. 
"My  dear  Father: 

I  write  you  a  few  lines  and  tell  you  that  I  am  well  yet  and 
hope  the  same  of  you.  I  read  in  a  paper  the  other  day  about 
the  crime  that  happened  down  there  in  Scappoose.  I  read  in  the 
paper  yesterday  that  they  thought  that  Mr.  J.  A.  Pender  might 
be  the  murderer  of  this  woman  and  her  little  son.  It  was  an 
awful  dirty  trick  whoever  done  it.  He  ought  to  be  hung  up  by 
his  ears  for  doing  that.  I  wish  they  could  find  the  right  man 
that  done  that.  I  would  put  in  a  word  that  they  hang  him  up 
for  that  murder  business.    I  was  figuring  to  come  home  the  30th 


I 


' 


The  Wchrinaii  Murder  63 

of  October  but  I  don't  think  I  will  for  awhile  now  that  I  can  get 
plenty  of  work  yet.  I  am  done  at  J.  L.  Schmidt's  and  now  I 
am  at  a  man  named  W.  P.  Dean  digging  potatoes.  I  will  have 
two  months'  work  there  and  from  there  I  will  go  to  Mr.  Nitchman 
and  stay  over  winter.  I  have  tried  to  save  up  a  little  money 
and  buy  me  a  new  watch.  I  broke  mine  all  to  pieces.  I  got  in 
a  fight  with  a  couple  of  drunkards  and  got  my  clothes  all  torn 
up  and  besides  my  face  beaten  in  and  all  fixed  up  in  good  shape 
for  awhile.  I  had  to  buy  me  some  new  clothes  again  and  also 
medicine  to  heal  myself  up.  I  am  all  right  now  though  I  have 
an  awful  headache  about  them  damned  fools  that  broke  my 
watch  up  for  me,  but  I  will  get  even  on  them  yet.  I  will  shoot 
their  damned  heads  off  if  I  ever  get  a  hold  of  them  and  I  don't 
care  if  they  put  me  in  the  place  where  Pender  is.  I  don't  care 
a  bit  for  that.  I  have  to  have  my  money  to  buy  a  new  watch 
again.  I  could  not  be  without  one.  I  will  try  with  all  my  might 
so  that  I  get  something  out  of  them  if  I  can.  Well  I  must  close 
for  this  time.    I  remain  Your  son, 

John  G.  H.  Sierks. 
R.  F.  D.  No.  1  box  43  in  care  of  L.  Nitchman,  write  soon." 

This  letter  the  father  preserved  also,  and  when  he  came  to 
Salem  after  John  had  confessed  to  the  murder  about  the  first 
of  January,  1915,  he  brought  this  letter  with  the  previous  one 
to  prove  that  John  was  innocent  and  that  he  merely  imagined 
that  he  had  killed  Mrs.  Wehrman.  This  letter  is  very  significant 
because  it  explains  elaborately  the  scratches  and  broken  watch 
which  the  Sierks  family,  the  Hunt  family  and  the  Nitchman 
family  all  knew  about  as  early  as  September  4. 

There  is  no  escape  from  the  conclusion  that  John  and  his 
father  were  trying  to  establish  an  alibi  for  John  by  means  of 
these  letters  in  case  John  should  be  accused  of  the  murder. 

G.  H.  Sierks  has  persistently  to  this  day  denied  that  John  was 
at  home  at  the  time  of  the  murder  or  even  soon  after,  and  the 
truth  has  come  out  only  through  Lena  Sierks  leaving  home  in 
1916,  where  she  was 'so  unkindly  treated  that  the  neighbors  com- 
plained and  had  her  removed  from  her  father's  control.  The 
sworn  statements  of  the  Hunt  family  and  the  Nitchmans  also 
confirm  Lena's  statements  that  John  was  at  home  just  before 
Mrs.  Wehrman's  dead  body  was  discovered. 

These  late  discovered  facts  explain  why  Mrs.  Sierks  and  Lena 
did  not  tell  their  neighbors  or  the  authorities  as  soon  as  they 


64  Why  Some  Men  Kill 

discovered  that  Mrs.  Wehrman  had  been  murdered.  They  evi- 
dently hoped  that  somebody  else  would  discover  the  murder. 
These  facts  indicate  how  John  Pender,  whom  G.  H.  Sierks  hated 
and  had  threatened  to  kill,  came  to  be  accused  of  the  crime. 
John  Sierks  was  to  be  saved  from  the  disgrace  of  a  murder  and 
Sierks'  hatred  of  Pender  was  to  be  gratified.  Sheriff  Thompson 
and  Detective  Levings  accepted  the  theory  and  worked  with 
great  industry  and  expense  to  convict  Pender  and  finally  suc- 
ceeded though  the  jury  at  the  first  trial  refused  to  convict.  There 
was  a  doubt  of  Penders'  guilt  that  hung  the  first  jury  but  after 
many  months  public  opinion  became  crystalized. 


Chapter  X 
CONFIRMATION  OF  JOHN  SIERKS'  CONFESSION  OF  THE 

MURDER 

It  has  taken  five  years  for  the  true  story  of  this  murder  to 
be  discovered,  and  the  two  years  that  have  passed  since  the 
facts  came  out  have  not  altered  the  situation.  John  Sierks  was 
at  home  when  the  inurder  was  committed,  and  the  Wehrmans 
and  the  Sierks  were  near  neighbors.  John's  letters  to  his  father, 
which  Mr.  Sierks,  Sr.,  was  so  careful  to  keep  for  several  years 
and  then  produce  after  John  confessed,  were  written  on  John's 
return  to  Louie  Schmidt's  in  Washington  County  to  establish  an 
alibi  evidently.  These  letters  were  possibly  suggested  by  some 
friend  of  John's  though  that  will  probably  never  be  known.  We 
only  know  that  there  must  have  been  some  motive  in  these  letters 
because  John  was  actually  at  home  according  to  his  sister  Lena, 
and  the  letters  pretend  that  he  was  away.  The  only  possible 
motive  was  to  set  up  an  alibi  and  throw  suspicion  on  Mr.  Pender. 

The  reconstructed  story  as  related  in  the  previous  chapters 
is  all  proven  by  independent  testimony  except  the  act  of  murder 
by  John  Sierks  in  the  Wehrman  cabin.  For  that  there  was  no 
witness. 

REPUDIATION    OF   THE   CONFESSION 

Some  sixty  hours  after  John  Sierks  had  made  this  confession j 
and  after  receiving  a  letter  from  his  father,  G.  H.  Sierks  of  Scap- 
poose,  saying  that  he  had  disgraced  the  family  and  that  theyj 


The  Wehrnuin  Murder  65 

would  pack  up  their  goods  and  leave  the  country  and  never 
see  him  again,  John  of  his  own  motion  wrote  the  following  let- 
ter and  without  consulting  anyone.  In  fact,  no  one  knew  of  it 
until  it  came  into  Dr.  Steiner's  hands.  Dr.  Steiner  is  Superin- 
tendent of  the  Salem  Hospital. 

"Salem,  Oregon,  Hospital  Station, 
"My  dear  Father: 

January  5,  1915. 

I  received  your  letter  and  also  the  presents  that  my  uncle  and 
aunts  and  cousins  sent  to  me.  I  thank  j'^ou  very  much  for  sending 
them  to  me,  I  feel  awful  sorry  that  you  have  given  me  up.  My 
dear  Father,  but  there  is  no  one  else  to  blame  but  myself.  I 
would  rather  be  in  the  penitentiary  than  to  stay  all  my  life  long 
in  the  asylum  where  I  cannot  have  my  liberty.  If  I  am  at  the 
penitentiary  I  would  have  my  liberty  no  matter  how  bad  I  am. 
I  know  that  when  I  was  a  boy  of  14  years  old  what  a  little  Devil 
I  was  and  the  older  I  got  the  worse  I  got  until  I  finally  had  to 
be  sent  to  a  place  where  I  have  to  behave  whether  I  want  to  or 
not.  But  I  am  going  to  make  my  life  pretty  some  day  when  I 
get  a  chance  for  I  am  tired  of  living  any  longer.  I  would  rather 
be  dead  than  alive  for  I  am  convicted  of  murder  in  the  first 
degree.  I  am  the  murderer  of  Mrs.  Daisy  Wehrman  and  her 
little  son.  I  am  the  man  that  done  the  dirty  trick  and  lied  on 
Pender.  I  may  be  in  St.  Helens  in  a  few  days  or  so  on  my  trial 
and  I  may  see  you  and  mother  and  sister  and  brother.  Otto,  for 
the  last  time  and  no  more. 

Well,  I  will  close  for  this  time.  With  love  and  best  regards 
to  you  all,  I  remain,  Your  loving  son, 

John  Sierks." 

If  John  Sierks  had  not  killed  Mrs.  Wehrman  and  her  boy, 
Mrs.  Sierks  and  Lena  would  not  have  concealed  the  murder  for 
24  hours  as  they  admit  doing  (and  probably  48  hours)  on  the 
pretense  that  they  believed  Mrs.  Wehrman  to  be  asleep  lying 
across  the  bed  with  her  bare  legs  hanging  over  the  side  and  her 
feet  on  the  floor,  and  when  the  door  to  the  cabin  was  padlocked 
on  the  outside  and  blood  was  on  the  ground  which  had  dripped 
from  the  cabin.  If  they  had  not  been  reasonably  certain  that 
John  did  the  deed  they  would  have  raised  a  hue  and  cry  at  once 
when  they  visited  her  cabin. 

If  John  Sierks  had  not  killed  Mrs.  Wehrman  and  her  boy 
Mr.  Sierks  and  his  family  would  not  have  denied  that  John  was 


66  Why  Some  Men  Kill 

at  home  when  the  murder  was  committed,  nor  would  these  two 
partly  cunning  and  partly  simple  letters  have  been  written  by 
John  to  his  father  and  then  carefully  preserved  by  G.  H.  Sierks 
to  prove  an  alibi  for  John  when  the  time  came  that  John  was 
suspected. 

If  Lena  Sierks  had  not  been  taken  away  from  her  father's 
control  the  fact  that  John  was  at  home  at  the  time  of  the  murder 
would  never,  probably,  have  been  established. 

If  John  Sierks  had  not  killed  Mrs.  Wehrman  and  her  boy 
he  would  not  have  gone  back  to  work  scratched  up  so  that  the 
Hunt  family  and  the  Nitchman  family  noticed  it,  and  John's 
various  explanations  of  it  would  not  have  been  made,  beginning 
Labor  Day  and  finally  culminating  in  an  elaborate  letter  to  his 
father  on  September  24,  which  was  written  after  he  had  been  at 
home  on  or  about  September  17. 

If  John  Sierks  had  not  been  guilty  he  would  not  have  had  to 
inquire  of  the  Persingers  within  two  weeks  after  the  murder  if 
his  hair  would  grow  in  where  it  had  been  pulled  out. 

If  John  Sierks  had  not  killed  Mrs.  Wehrman  and  her  boy 
he  would  not  voluntarily  and  without  suggestion  said  to  Mr. 
MacLaren  that  his  family  put  him  in  the  hospital  because  they 
thought  he  killed  Mrs.  Wehrman. 

If  John  Sierks  had  not  killed  Mrs.  Wehrman  and  her  boy 
he  would  not  have  confessed  to  the  crime  to  ease  his  unhappy 
soul. 

If  John  Sierks  had  not  killed  Mrs.  Wehrman  and  her  boy 
he  could  not  have  told  the  details  of  the  murder  with  the  accu- 
racy he  showed.  He  did  not  refer  to  the  fact  that  a  .32  caliber  bul- 
let was  found  in  the  wall  at  the  head  of  the  bed.  He  only  said  that 
Mrs.  Wehrman  fired  her  revolver  at  him  and  that  the  bullet 
went  to  his  right.  The  fact  that  Mrs.  Wehrman  had  a  .32  caliber 
revolver  was  brought  out  at  the  trial  and  also  that  a  .32  bullet 
was  dug  out  of  the  wall  at  the  head  of  the  bed.  The  fact  that 
the  head  of  the  bed  was  against  the  wall  to  the  right  of  the  door 
as  you  enter  the  cabin  was  not  brought  out  directly  at  all,  but 
the  fact  was  disclosed  at  the  time  of  the  murder  by  drawings 
reproduced  in  the  newspapers  and  by  the  testimony  of  witnesses. 
John  in  his  story  of  the  murder  told  how  he  took  Mrs.  Wehrman's 
drawers  off  and  for  what  purpose  and  where  he  placed  them. 
In  repudiating  his  confession  he  said  he  saw  that  detail  in  a 
newspaper,  which  is  absurd. 

If  John  Sierks  had  nqt  killed  Mrs.  Wehrman  and  her  boy  the 


The  Wehrman  Murder  67 

people  of  Columbia  County  would  not  have  been  imposed  upon 
by  a  clever  scheme  to  saddle  a  terrible  crime  on  John  Pender 
who  was  hated  by  Sierks. 

The  detectives  employed  by  the  State  and  also  the  detectives 
employed  by  the  Pender  family  showed  a  complete  ignorance  of 
the  nature  of  the  murder  and  the  kind  of  man  who  must  have 
committed  it,  and  accepted  as  final  the  statements  of  the  Sierks 
family  that  John  was  not  at  home  at  the  time  of  the  crime.  If 
they  had  been  moved  by  a  desire  for  scientific  accuracy  they 
would  have  travelled  some  15  miles  and  looked  up  John  Sierks, 
and  then  the  whole  thing  would  have  come  out.  This  would 
have  saved  the  taxpayers  of  Columbia  County  some  six  thousand 
dollars,  and  would  have  saved  them  the  tragedy  of  convicting  an 
innocent  man. 


Chapter  XI 
CIRCUMSTANTIAL  EVIDENCE 

It  is  claimed  to  be  a  rule  of  law  and  evidence  that  an  accused 
person  must  be  regarded  innocent  until  he  has  been  proven 
guilty.  This  is  the  theory,  but  as  a  matter  of  fact  we  all  know 
that  when  a  man  is  suspected  of  murder,  arrested  and  accused, 
we  all  begin  to  wonder  how  he  is  going  to  clear  himself  of  the 
charge.  As  a  matter  of  fact  no  man  can  clear  himself  unless  he 
can  prove  an  alibi — that  he  was  somewhere  else  at  the  time — or 
unless  it  is  clearly  shown  that  someone  else  committed  the  crime. 

Circumstantial  evidence  from  its  very  name  obviously  con- 
sists of  inferences  from  proved  facts.  In  criminal  trials,  like  that 
of  Arthur  Pender,  where  there  is  nothing  but  circumstantial  evi- 
dence, it  means  that  there  is  no  testimony  from  any  person  as  to 
any  overt  act  by  the  accused  which  tends  to  show  that  he  com- 
mitted the  crime.  It  is  all  a  question  of  circumstances,  and  those 
circumstances  must  be  such  that  the  ordinary,  every  day  experi- 
ences of  mankind  justify  the  inferences  that  the  conduct  of  the 
accused  person  in  view  of  the  circumstances  was  criminal,  or 
else  the  accusation  of  crime  falls  to  the  ground.  We  frequently 
hear  of  a  "Scotch  verdict,"  which  describes  the  verdict  "Not 
Proven"  in  Scotland  when  the  jury  thinks  there  is  some  founda- 
tion for  the  charge  but  where  the  evidence  does  not  warrant  a 
verdict  of  guilty.  This  peculiar  form  of  verdict  does  honor  to 
perhaps  the  most  intellectually  acute  people  of  the  modern  world 
for  the  words  "not  proven"  may  actually  describe  the  conclusions 
of  intelligent  men  who  weigh  evidence  and  who  cannot  consci- 
entiously convict  or  acquit  the  accused  on  the  inferences  to  be 
drawn  from  the  facts  or  circumstances. 

There  are  three  risks  in  accepting  circumstantial  evidence  as 
proving  or  disproving  an  accusation  of  crime.  The  first  is  that 
the  chain  of  circumstances  may  not  be  complete  and  that  the 
inferences  in  consequence  may  be  false.  The  second  is  that  the 
circumstances  may  not  be  fully  or  absolutely  estabhshed.  This 
is  the  greatest  danger  of  all,  for  it  is  the  most  common  faihng  of 
men  and  women  to  assume  offhand  that  a  certain  circumstance 
is  absolutely  a  fact  when  it  may  not  be  so  at  all.  Of  course  an 
inference  from  a  false  assumption  is  bound  to  be  false.  In  the 
every  day  affairs  of  life  this  is  perhaps  the  most  common  cause 
of  failure.    Men  often  do  not  get  their  facts  absolutely,  but  guess 


Circumstantial  Evidence  69 

at  them  in  part  and  so  frequently  fail  in  their  undertakings.  In 
the  case  of  a  jury  trying  a  man  for  murder  the  careless  readiness 
to  assume  that  certain  circumstances  arc  proved  when  they  are 
really  hased  on  an  inference  or  a  "maybe"  or  "might  be"  has 
been  responsible  for  many  a  miscarriage  of  justice.  This  is  the 
most  vicious  defect  in  the  administration  of  the  criminal  law  in 
the  United  States.  The  trial  judges  leave  it  to  the  juries  because 
the  juries  are  judges  of  the  facts,  and  superior  courts  as  a  rule 
affirm  all  convictions  where  the  trial  has  been  formally  correct. 
The  third  danger  from  the  acceptance  of  the  inferences  from 
the  circumstances  is  that  the  accused  person  may  have  been 
actuated  by  some  motive  known  only  to  himself  and  not  obvi- 
ously apparent.  That  motive  may  have  its  roots  in  some  per- 
sonal peculiarity  or  even  aberration  which  leads  the  accused  to 
act  in  a  different  way  from  the  mass  of  men.  For  instance  the 
crime  of  murder  involves  wilful  malice.  In  1917  a  man  was  con- 
victed of  murder  in  Multnomah  County  and  sentenced  to  the 
penitentiary  for  life.  The  killing  was  proved  and  the  inference 
from  the  proved  circumstances  was  that  the  murder  was  done 
with  malice  aforethought.  However  it  developed  wuthin  90  days 
that  this  so-called  wilful  murderer  was  a  paranoiac  and  had 
"delusions  of  persecution"  which  rendered  him  entirely  irrespon- 
sible. The  disease  developed  so  fast  after  he  was  confined  in 
the  penitentiary  that  he  had  to  be  removed  to  the  criminal  insane 
ward  of  the  state  hospital.  In  this  case  the  man  needed  to  be 
confined  and  the  only  injustice  was  the  destroying  of  the  repu- 
tation of  an  unfortunate  and  wholly  irresponsible  person. 

ARTHUR  Pender's  trial 

In  Arthur  Pender's  trial  there  was  no  circumstance  of  any 
kind  which  necessarily  connected  him  with  the  crime.  In  addi- 
tion there  was  no  circumstance  which  stood  by  itself  as  firmly 
established.  Even  on  the  theory  of  District  Attorney  Tongue  and 
Mr.  Lcvings,  the  detective,  the  validity  of  the  circumstances  all 
depended  upon  each  other.  That  is  to  say,  the  inference  drawn 
from  a  disputed  fact  was  needed  to  help  bolster  up  another  fact 
also  of  uncertain  standing  This  is  not  only  bad  logic  but  it  is 
condemned  in  law.  Its  basing  one  inference  upon  another  which 
is  forbidden.  An  inference  based  upon  a  fact  is  legitimate  but  a 
double  inference  is  not  allowed. 

THE  SCRATCHED  BULLETS 

On  Wednesday,  September  6,  the  Sierks  family  informed  the 


70  Why  Some  Men  Kill 

sheriff  that  Mrs.  Wehrman  had  been  killed.  It  was  assumed  by 
the  sheriff  from  indications  that  the  murder  was  committed  on 
Sunday,  the  3rd.  Then  Monday,  September  4,  was  fixed  as  the 
day,  and  as  the  detective's  theory  came  to  be  developed  the  time 
was  set  sometime  Monday  night  after  6  P.  M.  There  was  no  evi- 
dence to  support  this  idea  but  the  theory  offered  was  that  a 
Colts  revolver  had  been  stolen  by  Pender  from  Riley  and  Has- 
sen's  cabin,  as  Pender  had  no  Colts  revolver,  and  that  the  killing 
was  done  with  this  gun.  The  evidence  that  this  gun  was  used 
consisted  in  the  fact  that  the  bullets  were  scratched  by  a  gas  pit 
in  the  barrel  and  that  this  particular  gun  had  a  gas  pit  which  did 
scratch  the  bullets  fired  out  of  it  in  a  similar  manner.  Mr.  Lev- 
ings  was  the  expert  witness  for  the  prosecution  and  his  testimony 
was  absolutely  contradicted  by  Detective  Craddock,  a  revolver 
expert  on  the  Portland  police  force. 

It  cannot  be  claimed  Mr.  Levings  expert  testimony  to  sustain 
his  own  theory  proved  the  fact  that  a  gas  pit  in  a  revolver  barrel 
would  scratch  a  bullet  in  face  of  the  opposing  testimony  of 
Detective  Craddock,  a  recognized  revolver  expert  of  years  of 
experience.  It  was  simply  a  case  of  "maybe."  Even  if  Mr.  Lev- 
ings was  right  it  did  not  prove  that  this  particular  Colts  revolver 
was  the  only  one  with  a  gas  pit  in  the  barrel. 

Then  the  theory  that  the  revolver  was  stolen  made  it  neces- 
sary to  claim  that  the  murder  was  done  sometime  Monday  night 
because  Riley  and  Hassen  were  at  home  all  day  Sunday  and  all 
day  Monday  until  nearly  6  P.  M.,  when  they  left  for  Portland.  So 
the  time  of  the  murder  was  made  to  depend  upon  the  scratch  on 
the  bullets  from  which  the  inference  was  drawn  that  they  were 
fired  from  the  revolver  in  Riley's  cabin,  but  that  could  not  have 
been  stolen  before  Monday  night  at  6  P.  M.  because  the  owner 
was  at  home  up  to  that  time.  In  addition  there  was  no  direct 
proof  that  the  revolver  had  ever  been  stolen  by  anybody.  That, 
too,  depended  on  the  inference  that  the  bullets  could  not  have 
been  scratched  by  being  fired  from  any  other  revolver.  If  the 
revolver  was  stolen  it  was  returned,  as  admitted  by  the  prosecu- 
tion. Here  was  another  "maybe."  Riley  and  Hassen's  testimony 
as  to  whether  their  cabin  was  entered  depended  on  the  appear- 
ance of  a  window  blind  and  the  condition  of  the  trunk.  The  time 
when  it  was  entered  was  also  disputed  by  the  very  owners  of  the 
cabin  at  the  different  trials.  They  came  home  on  September  10 
and  on  September  17  .  If  they  did  not  discover  the  signs  of  en- 
trance on  September  10  (the  murder  occurred  a  week  before) 


Circumstantial  Evidence  71 

then  the  whole  theory  that  this  particuhir  revolver  was  used  fails. 
Here  is  another  "niaybe"  for  the  testimony  of  the  prosecution's 
witnesses  was  contradictory.  There  was  also  a  complete  uncer- 
tainty as  to  whether  the  revolver  was  loaded  when  placed  in  the 
trunk  and  when  found  afterwards  or  whether  it  was  placed  in 
the  trunk  unloaded  and  later  found  loaded.  Here  is  still  another 
"maybe." 

The  accusation  of  murder  against  Mr.  Pender  depends  on  the 
theory  that  he  stole  the  revolver  Monday  night,  used  it  to  kill 
Mrs.  Wehrman  and  returned  it  loaded,  and  that  theory  rests 
entirely  on  the  fact  that  the  bullets  were  scratched.  That  is  to 
say  '*maybe"  the  bullets  were  scratched  by  Riley's  revolver  and 
"maybe"  not.  "Maybe"  Riley's  cabin  was  entered  before  the 
murder  and  "maybe"  not.  "Maybe"  the  revolver  was  taken  from 
the  trunk  and  "maybe"  not.  "Maybe"  the  revolver  was  loaded 
when  placed  in  the  trunk  and  "maybe"  not.  "Maybe"  Mrs.  Wehr- 
man and  her  child  were  murdered  Monday  night  and  "maybe" 
not.  "Maybe"  Mrs.  Wehrman  and  her  child  were  killed  with 
Riley's  revolver  and  "maybe"  not.  It  all  depends  upon  the 
scratches  on  the  bullets  found  in  the  Wehrman  cabin.  There  was 
nothing  but  "maybes"  offered  by  the  prosecution  in  addition  to 
the  bullets. 

WHERE  WAS  MR.  PENDER? 

The  theory  of  the  use  of  the  revolver  just  referred  to  depends 
upon  Mr.  Pender's  stealing  it  sometime  in  the  evening  of  Septem- 
ber 4  and  then  going  to  the  Wehrman  cabin.  Mr.  Pender  said  he 
was  in  his  tent  house  near  Riley's  (which  was  a  mile  from  Wehr- 
man's  cabin)  the  evening  of  September  4  and  that  he  had  a  lan- 
tern lit  inside.  A  neighbor  who  passed  testified  that  he  did  not 
see  the  light  from  the  lantern  shining  through  the  tent  fly.  It  was 
not  claimed  that  anybody  saw  Pender.  The  witness  did  not  see 
the  light  in  the  tent  so  the  inference  was  offered  to  the  jury  that 
Mr.  Pender  had  stolen  the  revolver  and  gone  to  the  Wehrman 
cabin — "maybe." 

Mr.  Pender  used  to  get  the  mail  at  Scappoose  and  put  it  in  a 
box  near  his  tent  house  for  his  neighbors  to  help  themselves.  An 
Iowa  paper  and  a  small  package  were  found  unopened  in  the 
Wehrman  cabin,  and  to  support  the  theory  that  Mr.  Pender  took 
them  there  was  the  testimony  of  a  very  contradictory  nature  that 
Mr.  Pender  asked  for  the  Wehrman  mail  on  Monday.  "Maybe" 
he  did.  The  Supreme  Court  of  Oregon  in  its  opinion  on  the 
Pender  case  uses  the  following  words :    "He  (Pender)  may  have 


72  Why  Some  Men  Kill 

taken  the  Bates  package  and  have  kept  it  until  he  obtained  the 
Iowa  paper  the  next  day,  and  he  may  have  taken  the  package 
and  the  paper  to  the  Wehrman  cabin  on  Monday  night  as  an 
excuse  for  making  a  call  on  Mrs.  Wehrman,  and  the  murder 
may  have  been  committed  immediately  thereafter."  The  highest 
court  in  Oregon  thus  tells  how  "maybe"  the  whole  thing  hap- 
pened. The  Supreme  Court  did  not  know  that  Mr.  Wehrman 
testified  at  the  preliminary  hearing  a  few^  weeks  after  the  mur- 
der that  the  "package"  was  at  his  cabin  on  Sunday  before  he  left 
for  Portland.  This  eliminates  the  package,  but  it's  pure  guess 
work  as  to  the  paper,  as  the  Supreme  Court  admits  in  saying  that 
Pender  may  have  taken  the  paper  to  the  Wehrman  cabin. 

SCRATCHES  ON   MR.   PENDER's   FACE 

Foreign  matter  was  found  under  Mrs.  Wehrman's  finger  nails 
and  some  witnesses  testified  that  Pender's  face  was  scratched. 
Other  witnesses  as  well  qualified  apparently  as  the  first  did  not 
see  any  scratches.  The  inference  that  Mrs.  Wehrman  scratched 
Pender's  face  from  the  fact  that  there  was  foreign  matter  under 
the  finger  nails  of  Mrs.  Wehrman's  hands  was  not  sustained  by 
testimony.  It's  another  case  of  "maybe."  This  is  a  doubtful 
"maybe"  because  Mrs.  Wehrman  in  her  struggles  had  pulled  out 
some  brown  hair  from  someone's  head  and  the  hair  was  found 
in  her  dead  hands.  The  hair  was  brown  and  Pender's  hair  is 
black. 

In  the  Pender  trial  there  were  no  circumstances  established 
in  connection  with  the  murder  of  Mrs.  Wehrman  and  her  child 
from  which  any  legitimate  inferences  could  be  drawn  connecting 
Mr.  Pender  with  the  murder.  The  only  facts  were  that  the  bullets 
found  in  the  Wehrman  cabin  were  slightly  scratched  and  that 
there  was  foreign  matter  under  the  finger  nails  of  Mrs.  Wehr- 
man's hands  and  some  brown  hairs  in  her  fingers.  It  was  not  a 
fair  inference  nor  a  safe  inference  that  Riley  and  Hassen's  Colts 
revolver  locked  in  a  trunk  in  a  locked  house  a  mile  away  was  the 
only  revolver  from  which  these  bullets  could  have  been  fired. 
Neither  was  it  a  fair  inference  nor  a  safe  inference  that  Mrs. 
Wehrman  scratched  Mr.  Pender's  face.  The  fact  that  the  hair 
in  her  fingers  was  brown  while  Mr.  Pender's  hair  is  black  goes 
directly  against  the  inference  that  Mr.  Pender  was  assaulting  her 
and  that  she  fought  and  scratched  him. 

The  whole  theory  of  the  prosecution  of  Mr.  Pender  rested  on 
the  bullets  and  foreign  matter  under  Mrs.   Wehrman's  finger 


Circnmstantiiil  Evidence  73 

nails  and  the  brown  hairs.  The  stolen  revolver,  the  mail,  Pen- 
der's presence  at  the  scene  of  the  murder  are  all  inferences  or 
"maybes,"  and  each  of  these  inferences  had  to  depend  upon  the 
others  for  mutual  support. 

However  the  jury  convicted  Mr.  Pender  of  murder  and  the 
court  sentenced  him  to  be  hung.  This  sort  of  thing  was  accepted 
as  circumstantial  evidence  under  the  laws  of  Oregon  and  ap- 
proved by  trial  judge  and  accepted  by  the  Supreme  Court  of 
the  state  in  this  fashion.  Mr.  Pender  "may"  have  taken  the  pack- 
age, he  "may"  have  kept  it  till  he  got  the  Iowa  paper,  he  "may" 
have  taken  the  paper  and  package  to  the  Wehrman  cabin  as  an 
excuse  and  the  murder  "may"  have  been  committed  immediately 
thereafter. 

The  distressing  thing  in  the  Pender  trial  as  well  as  in  the 
Branson  trial  where  inferences  were  based  on  inferences  and 
they  in  turn  on  other  inferences  in  order  to  justify  the  convic- 
tions which  were  obtained  in  the  trial  courts,  and  w^hich  were 
tacitly  approved  by  the  Supreme  Court  of  Oregon,  is  the  undeni- 
able fact  that  in  Sections  783,  784,  785  of  Bellingers  and  Cotton's 
Code,  and  Sections  794,  795,  796  of  Lord's  Oregon  Laws,  it  is  ex- 
plicitly stated  as  the  law  of  Oregon  that  "an  inference  must  be 
founded  on  a  fact  legally  proved."  These  laws  were  adopted  in 
Oregon  as  long  ago  as  1862  and  there  is  more  than  one  decision 
of  the  Supreme  Court  resting  entirely  on  this  state  law  concern- 
ing indirect  evidence. 

The  most  noteworthy  case  was  the  Hembree  murder  trial 
where  a  conviction  was  reversed  by  the  Supreme  Court  on  this 
particular  point.  The  case  is  to  be  found  in  the  54th  Oregon 
Beports. 

A.  J.  Hembree  lived  on  a  farm  in  Tillamook  County  with  his 
wife  and  daughter,  Ora,  and  two  boys.  Ora  was  18  years  old. 
On  December  26,  1905,  the  two  boys  went  aw^ay  from  home  to 
visit  some  relatives.  On  December  28  at  2:45  A.  M.,  Mr.  Hembree 
appeared  at  the  home  of  Mr.  Hoyt,  a  neighbor,  and  inquired  if 
his  wife  and  daughter  had  arrived.  On  receiving  a  negative 
answer  he  said  his  house  had  burned  down  and  that  his  wife  and 
daughter  were  out  in  the  cold.  Mr.  Hembree  had  arrived  at  the 
Hoyt's  onl}^  partly  clad  and  was  suffering  acutely  from  hernia,  as 
he  had  left  his  truss  off  on  going  to  bed,  and  so  he  asked  that 
James  Thompson,  a  brother-in-law  of  Mr.  Hoyt's  go  and  look 
for  his  wife  and  daughter. 

Thompson  found  a  bed  of  coals  six  feet  square  and  three  feet 


74  Why  Some  Men  Kill 

high  on  what  had  been  the  center  of  the  Hembree  house  site,  but 
he  could  find  no  trace  of  Mrs.  Hembree  and  Ora.  Thompson 
notified  two  neighbors  and  they  went  to  the  site  of  the  home  and 
found  in  the  embers  two  human  skeletons,  which  it  was  admitted 
were  the  remains  of  Mrs.  Hembree  and  Ora  Hembree. 

Hembree's  story  was  that  he  and  his  wife  occupied  a  bedroom 
upstairs  and  that  Ora  occupied  another  room  upstairs.  They  were 
awakened  in  the  night  and  found  the  house  on  fire  and  rushed 
out  of  doors  partially  dressed.  Ora  exclaimed  that  all  her  good 
clothes  were  in  her  room  and  wanted  to  go  back  to  get  them.  Mr. 
Hembree  said  that  he  looked  at  the  stairway  and  saw  that  it 
was  burning  underneath  and  told  Ora  not  to  try  to  go  back  to 
her  room  as  it  was  dangerous.  Mr,  Hembree  then  went  into  the 
kitchen  and  threw  a  number  of  things  outside,  which  were  after- 
wards found.  When  he  went  out  he  did  not  find  his  wife  and 
daughter  and  after  looking  in  the  barn  concluded  that  they  had 
gone  to  Mr.  Hoyt's  and  so  followed.  This  was  Mr.  Hembree's 
account  of  the  tragedy,  but  he  was  arrested  for  the  murder  and 
tried  and  convicted.  There  was  no  direct  evidence  connecting 
Hembree  with  the  alleged  murder,  but  it  was  sought  to  establish 
certain  circumstances  from  which  a  certain  inference  was  of- 
fered to  the  jury  and  on  that  inference  another  inference  was 
based  to  account  for  Hembree's  motive  for  killing  his  wife  and 
daughter. 

The  motive  claimed  was  Hembree's  alleged  or  inferred  im- 
proper intimacy  with  his  daughter,  Ora.  This  was  attempted  to 
be  proved  by  the  testimony  of  a  hotel-keeper  in  Tillamook  who 
said  that  Hembree  brought  his  daughter  to  his  hotel  a  number 
of  times  when  she  was  attending  school.  On  February  22,  1905, 
Larsen,  the  hotel-keeper,  said  Hembree  had  been  to  his  daugh- 
ter's room  "because  of  marks  of  feet  there." 

In  June  of  1905  Hembree  took  his  daughter  to  the  hotel  and 
late  in  the  night  insisted  on  going  to  her  room  to  tell  her  some- 
thing important.  Hembree  testified  in  his  own  behalf  that  he  had 
given  his  daughter  money  to  keep  for  him  to  prevent  him  spend- 
ing it  for  drink  and  that  he  went  to  Ora's  room  to  get  a  few  dol- 
lars to  buy  some  liquor.  Three  men  corroborated  this  to  the 
extent  of  saying  that  he  went  to  the  hotel  and  when  he  came 
back  exhibited  some  money  and  went  and  bought  some  liquor 
with  it. 

Hembree's  lawyers  argued  that  Hembree  in  going  to  his 
daughter's  room  at  the  hotel  without  any  attempt  at  concealment 


Circumstantial  Evidence  75 

was  not  necessarily  guilty  of  misconduct  and  that  the  jury  was 
incorrectly  permitted  to  infer  that  Hembree  was  on  terms  of 
improper  intimacy  with  his  daughter. 

The  Supreme  Court  said  "Evidence  showing  that  a  party 
charged  with  crime  had  a  motive  for  committing  it  is  not  requi- 
site, though  such  proof  is  of  great  importance  in  cases  depend- 
ing on  circumstantial  evidence."  The  court  also  quotes  from 
"People  vs.  Stout,"  a  New  York  case,  as  bearing  directly  on  this 
point.  In  the  4th  volume  of  Parker's  Criminal  Reports  (New 
York)  this  matter  of  inferential  evidence  from  proved  facts  is 
discussed  at  length  (pages  71  to  128)  on  an  appeal  from  the  trial 
court.  Ira  Stout  was  tried  for  the  murder  of  his  sister's  husband, 
but  the  evidence  against  him  was  purely  circumstantial,  or  infer- 
ential as  we  say  in  other  matters.  The  prosecution  recognized 
that  under  the  rulings  of  the  New  York  courts  the  motive  for  the 
murder  must  be  established  before  Stout  could  be  convicted  in 
view  of  the  fact  that  there  was  no  direct  evidence,  but  only  cir- 
cumstantial, that  he  did  commit  the  murder. 

The  prosecution  established  the  fact  by  competent  evidence 
that  Stout  had  been  on  terms  of  improper  intimacy  (incestuous) 
with  his  married  sister  for  several  months  before  her  husband 
was  killed.  The  court  held  on  the  appeal  from  the  trial  court 
that  Stout's  motive  for  killing  his  brother-in-law  was  properly 
deduced  from  this  criminal  intimacy  with  his  sister  and  together 
with  the  circumstantial  evidence  that  he,  Stout,  did  kill  his 
brother-in-law  was  sufficient  to  sustain  the  conviction  of  murder 
in  the  trial  court. 

ANOTHER  CASE 

In  Volume  3  of  Parker's  Criminal  Reports  (New  York)  on 
pages  681-686  is  given  the  decision  on  appeal  in  "The  People  vs. 
Wood."  This  also  was  a  murder  case  where  there  was  nothing 
but  circumstantial  or  inferential  evidence.  Wood  attempted  to 
kill  his  brother  and  sister-in-law  and  their  children  by  giving 
them  poison.  He  failed  in  the  case  of  the  children  but  then  got 
himself  appointed  guardian  of  the  children's  estate  and  then  cre- 
ated forged  claims  against  the  estate.  On  his  trial  for  murder 
evidence  was  offered  and  admitted  over  protest  tending  to  prove 
these  other  crimes  in  order  to  establish  a  motive  for  the  murder 
for  which  he  was  being  tried. 

The  case  was  appealed  for  a  writ  of  error  on  the  ground  that 
evidence   had   been    admitted    tending    to    prove    other   crimes 


76  Why  Some  Men  Kill 

against  the  defendant.  The  court  refused  to  grant  a  new  trial 
because  the  evidence  offered  concerning  other  crimes  of  the  de- 
fendant was  legitimate  in  this  case  because  such  evidence  tended 
to  establish  the  motive  for  the  murder  for  which  Wood  was 
being  tried. 

Justice  Johnson  said:  "The  case  being  one  of  circumstantial 
evidence  wholly,  proof  of  the  existence  of  a  criminal  inotive  in 
the  mind  of  the  prisoner  to  commit  the  act  was  essential  to  mak- 
ing out  a  case  against  him  which  would  justify  a  verdict  of 
guilty." 

The  Oregon  Supreme  Court  in  reversing  the  conviction  of 
Hembree  for  murder  and  in  ordering  a  new  trial  also  referred  to 
the  principles  laid  down  in  "The  People  vs.  Bennett,"  a  case 
passed  on  by  the  New  York  Court  of  Appeals  which  is  given  in 
Vol.  49  of  the  New  York  Reports  on  pages  137-149.  The  prin- 
ciples involved  in  this  decision  have  such  an  important  bearing 
on  both  the  Branson  case  and  the  Pender  case  that  it  is  worth 
while  to  quote  from  it  more  fully  than  did  the  Oregon  Supreme 
Court  in  the  Hembree  case. 

Bennett  had  been  tried  for  killing  his  wife  but  the  evidence 
was  wholly  circumstantial.  Moreover  the  manner  of  the  homi- 
cide was  so  peculiar  that  the  question  of  the  motive  became  very 
important.  *  The  court  said:  "Motive  is  an  inducement,  or  that 
which  leads  or  tempts  the  mind  to  indulge  the  criminal  act.  It 
is  resorted  to  as  a  means  of  arriving  at  an  ultimate  fact,  not  for 
the  purpose  of  explaining  the  reason  of  a  criminal  act  which  has 
been  clearly  proved,  but  from  the  important  aid  it  may  render  in 
completing  the  proof  of  the  commission  of  the  act  when  it  might 
otherwise  remain  in  doubt.  With  motives  in  any  speculative 
sense,  neither  the  law  nor  the  tribunal  which  administers  it  has 
any  concern. 


*  Note  :  In  the  Bennett  case  the  motive  appeared  from 
the  evidence  to  apply  to  the  husband  alone.  In  the  Bran- 
son case  in  Oregon  the  court  instructed  the  jury  that  there 
was  no  evidence  tending  to  prove  adulterous  relations 
between  Branson  and  Mrs.  Booth,  or  in  other  words  that 
no  motive  was  established.  In  the  Pender  case  the  Supreme 
Court  said  the  motive  of  the  murderer  was  clear;  that  Mrs. 
Wehrman  died  rather  than  submit  to  dishonor,  but  there 
was  nothing  to  show  that  Pender  had  any  such  motive.  It 
might  have  been  some  other  man. 


(Jrciunstantial  Evidence  11 

"It  is  in  cases  of  proof  by  circumstantial  evidence  tliat  the 
motive  often  becomes  not  only  material,  but  controlling,  and  in 
such  cases  the  facts  from  which  it  may  be  inferred  must  be 
proved.  It  cannot  be  imagined  any  more  than  any  other  circum- 
stance in  the  case." 

The  New  York  Court  of  Appeals  also  said  in  this  case,  "In  de- 
termining a  cpiestion  of  fact  from  circumstantial  evidence,  there 
are  two  general  rules  to  be  observed :  1.  The  hypothesis  of  delin- 
(juency  or  guilt  should  flow  naturally  from  the  facts  proved,  and 
be  consistent  with  them  all.  2.  The  evidence  must  be  such  as  to 
exclude,  to  a  moral  certainty,  every  hypothesis  but  that  of  his 
guilt  of  the  offense  imputed  to  him;  or,  in  other  words,  the  facts 
proved  must  all  be  consistent  with  and  point  to  his  guilt  not  only, 
but  they  must  be  inconsistent  with  his  innocence." 

The  Oregon  Supreme  Court  in  the  Hembree  case  clearly  up- 
held the  principle  established  in  many  cases  in  other  courts  of 
appeal  that  the  motive  for  a  crime  is  of  great  importance  where 
the  evidence  is  wholly  circumstantial,  and  also  that  the  infer- 
ences as  to  a  motive  must  depend  upon  facts  legally  proved.  The 
Hembree  decision  on  which  hinged  a  man's  life  rested  on  this 
point,  and  the  court  in  discussing  the  matter  of  inferences  re- 
ferred to  Section  783,  784  and  785  of  Bellinger  and  Cotton's  Code 
and  Statutes  of  Oregon  where  it  is  explicitly  stated  that  "An  in- 
ference must  be  founded  on  a  fact  legally  proved." 

On  the  general  rule  that  one  inference  cannot  be  based  on 
another  and  especially  in  view^  of  the  Oregon  statute  the  court 
held  as  to  the  testimony  concerning  Hembree's  going  to  his 
daughter's  room  under  the  known  circumstances  that  it  did  not 
justify  the  inference  that  he  was  on  terms  of  improper  intimacy 
with  his  daughter,  and  that  consequently  the  further  inference 
that  his  alleged  improper  intimacy  with  his  daughter  was  a 
motive  for  killing  her  and  his  wife  was  also  a  false  inference 
and  did  not  in  connection  with  the  circumstances  of  the  death  of 
the  wife  and  daughter  justify  the  verdict  of  guilty.  The  case  was 
reversed  and  a  new  trial  ordered. 

Supposing  that  in  the  trial  of  William  Branson  for  the  mur- 
der of  William  Booth  the  case  had  been  appealed  to  the  Supreme 
Court  on  the  ground  that  there  was  no  direct  evidence  whatever 
of  the  killing  of  Booth  by  Branson  and  that  there  was  no  fact 
established  from  which  a  motive  could  be  properly  inferred  for 
such  alleged  killing.  The  judge  in  the  trial  court  charged  the 
jury:     "It  is  claimed  in  this  case  on  the  part  of  the  prosecution 


78  Why  Some  Men  Kill 

for  the  purpose  of  establishing  a  motive  on  the  part  of  the  de- 
fendants for  the  kiUing  of  Wilham  Booth  that  ilHcit  or  improper 
relations  existed  between  the  said  defendants,  William  Branson 
and  Anna  Booth. 

"You  are  instructed  as  a  matter  of  law,  that  there  is  no  evi- 
dence in  this  case  establishing  adulterous  relations  existing  be- 
tween the  defendant  Branson  and  Anna  Booth." 

Supposing  in  addition  to  the  absence  of  any  proven  fact  from 
which  to  deduce  a  motive  the  appeal  to  the  Supreme  Court  had 
shown  that  the  inference  was  offered  to  the  jury  that  because 
Mrs.  Booth  was  seen  walking  along  a  certain  road  and  that  per- 
haps Branson  was  riding  a  bicycle  in  the  same  direction  coming 
along  at  a  distance  behind  her,  that  Branson  and  Mrs.  Booth 
were  together  in  the  brush  near  the  spot  where  Booth  was  killed, 
and  based  on  that  inference  the  second  inference  was  offered  to 
the  jury  that  Branson  and  Mrs.  Booth  were  in  a  compromising 
situation,  and  based  on  the  second  inference  the  third  inference 
was  offered  to  the  jury  that  Booth  must  have  caught  his  wife 
and  Branson  in  a  compromising  position  and  that  then  and  be- 
cause of  these  supposed  happenings  Branson  shot  and  killed 
Booth. 

What  would  the  Supreme  Court  have  done  in  view  of  the 
statute  that  "an  inference  must  be  founded  on  a  fact  legally 
proved,"  and  in  view  of  its  remarkably  clear  exposition  of  the 
law  both  as  to  proving  a  motive  and  as  to  indirect  evidence  gen- 
erally in  the  case  of  the  State  vs.  Hembree? 

Supposing  that  in  the  trial  of  John  Arthur  Pender  for  the 
murder  of  Mrs.  Wehrman  the  case  had  been  appealed  to  the 
Supreme  Court  on  the  grounds  that  the  prosecution  had  estab- 
lished no  fact  whatever  from  which  a  motive  for  the  murder 
could  be  deduced,  and  that  the  only  evidence  against  Pender 
consisted  of  inferences  based  on  other  inferences.  It  is  true  that 
the  prosecution  introduced  testimony  to  show  that  Mrs.  Wehr- 
man did  not  speak  to  Arthur  Pender  on  a  certain  day,  but  three 
witnesses  for  the  defense  testified  that  Pender  was  elsewhere 
fighting  fire  on  the  day  in  question.  It  is  also  true  that  the 
Supreme  Court  offered  the  inference  that  Mrs.  Wehrman  did  not 
speak  to  Mr.  Pender  because  something  might  have  happened 
between  them  which  made  it  impossible  for  her  to  recognize 
him  and  that  she  died  rather  than  submit  to  dishonor.  This 
contains  the  imphcation  of  course  that  Mr.  Pender  insulted  Mrs. 
Wehrman  on  some  occasion.     As  a  voluntary  offering  by  the 


Circumstantial  Euideiirr  79 

Supreme  Court  this  lias  a  very  curious  sound  when  compared 
with  the  opinion  given  by  the  same  court  in  the  Hembree  case — 
"evidence  showing  that  a  party  charged  with  crime  had  a  motive 
for  committing  it  is  not  requisite  though  such  proof  is  of  great 
importance  in  cases  depending  on  circumstantial  evidence"  and 
the  quotation  from  Reports  of  New  York  to  the  effect  that  in 
such  cases  the  motive  "often  becomes  not  only  material  but  con- 
trolling, and  in  such  cases  the  facts  from  which  it  may  be  in- 
ferred must  be  proved.  It  cannot  be  imagined  any  more  than 
any  other  circumstances  in  the  case." 

It  was  imagined,  however,  in  Mr.  Pender's  case,  and  it  is  fair 
to  say  that  the  court  endorsed  the  powers  of  imagination 
gratuituously. 

As  to  the  circumstantial  evidence  against  Mr.  Pender  in  the 
matter  of  the  killing,  because  the  bullets  found  in  the  cabin  were 
scratched  it  did  not  necessarily  follow  that  they  were  fired  out 
of  the  revolver  belonging  to  Riley  and  Hassen;  because  some 
Colts  revolver  was  used  it  did  not  follow  that  Riley  and  Hassen's 
revolver  w^as  stolen  and  used,  or  that  Mr.  Pender  stole  the  re- 
volver, or  that  the  murder  was  committed  Monday  night  because 
Riley  and  Hassen's  revolver  could  not  have  been  stolen  before  6 
P.  M.  Monday.  No  fact  was  legally  established  which  made 
these  inferences  legitimate.  Because  a  neighbor  passing  Mr. 
Pender's  tent  house  Monday  night  did  not  notice  a  light  in  the 
tent  it  does  not  follow  that  Pender  had  gone  to  the  Wehrman 
cabin.  That  is  not  a  legitimate  inference  based  on  a  fact.  It  was 
not  a  legitimate  inference  that  Mr.  Pender  took  the  mail  to  the 
Wehrman  cabin,  even  if  he  took  it  to  the  mail  box  from  Scap- 
poose,  which  is  uncertain  at  least. 

The  inference  that  Mrs.  Wehrman  scratched  Pender's  face 
because  there  was  foreign  matter  under  her  finger  nails  and 
some  brown  hairs  in  her  dead  fingers  (Pender's  hair  is  black) 
was  not  justified  because  she  might  have  scratched  some  other 
man's  face  and  neck  and  probably  a  man  who  had  brown  hair. 

What  would  the  Supreme  Court  have  done  if  the  Pender  con- 
viction had  been  appealed  on  these  points  in  view  of  the  law  on 
indirect  evidence,  and  in  view  of  the  court's  decision  in  the  Hem- 
bree case? 

The  Oregon  law  on  indirect  evidence  is  not  peculiar  to  this 
state,  as  has  been  shown,  and  there  are  many  decisions  in  other 
states  based  on  the  same  principle  that  basic  facts  must  be 
established  before  inferences  can  be  drawn. 


80  Why  Some  Men  Kill 

Supplement  to  Chapter  XI. 

(After  Chapter  XL  had  been  written  I  had  the  privilege  of 
reading  the  following  brief  in  the  case  of  Mr.  Pender  which  had 
been  voluntarily  prepared  by  Judge  Martin  L.  Pipes.  Judge 
Pipes  is  one  of  the  leading  lawyers  of  Oregon  and  has  taken  a 
great  interest  in  the  cases  of  Mr.  Pender  and  William  Branson 
and  Mrs.  Booth.  I  was  so  fortunate  as  to  secure  his  consent  to 
printing  his  brief  in  this  account  of  these  murder  cases. — G.A.T.) 

We  submit  that  Pender  is  innocent  and  ought  to  be  pardoned. 
We  refer  to  the  record  of  his  cause  on  trial  to  show  that. 

A  murder  was  committed.  The  circumstances  proved  show 
that  probably  on  Sunday,  September  3,  or  Monda3%  September 
4,  1911,  some  person  entered  the  cabin  of  Mistress  Wehrman, 
attempted  a  criminal  assault  on  her,  struck  her  on  the  head  with 
a  hatchet,  shot  her  three  times  in  the  head,  kiUing  her,  and  shot 
her  little  boy,  six  years  old,  three  times  in  the  head,  kilhng  him. 

The  evidence  relied  on  to  sustain  the  conviction  of  Pender 
for  the  murder  consists  of  three  principal  circumstances. 

1st:  That  some  mail  consisting  of  a  paper  in  a  wrapper  was 
delivered  to  Pender  by  the  postoffice  at  Scappoose  on  Labor  Day. 

2nd:  That  the  pistol,  a  .38  calibre,  with  which  the  shooting 
was  done,  belonged  to  Riley  and  Hassen,  who  lived  near  Pender; 
that  someone  entered  their  cabin  and  took  their  pistol  out  of  a 
trunk  and  that  it  was  afterwards  replaced  in  the  trunk  and  that 
Pender  knew  that  Riley  and  Hassen  had  a  pistoL 

3rd:  That  several  days  after  the  murder  persons  observed 
that  Pender's  face  was  scratched,  as  if  by  finger  nails. 

None  of  these  facts  were  certainly  proved,  but  for  the  purpose 
of  the  point  now  to  be  argued  it  will  be  assumed  that  these  facts 
were  established.  If  they  were  established  they  fall  far  short  of 
proving  that  Pender  was  the  guilty  man.  Aside  from  these  facts 
there  is  no  other  evidence  justifying  even  a  suspicion  against 
Pender. 

Before  examining  the  question  we  make  the  preliminary 
statement  that  under  the  law  of  Oregon  contained  in  the  code 
and  construed  by  the  Supreme  Court,  an  inference  cannot  be 
based  upon  another  inference  to  prove  any  fact  in  dispute,  either 
in  a  civil  or  criminal  case,  but  every  conclusion  must  be  founded 
upon  a  fact  proved.  In  the  case  of  State  vs.  Lem  Woon  (57  Ore- 
gon, 482  and  504)  a  pistol  was  admitted  in  evidence.  The  court 
said:  "To  admit  the  weapon  under  the  proof  accompanying  it  is 
to  rely  on  an  inference  from  an  inference  and  not  a  deduction 


Judge  Pipes'  Brief  81 

from  an  established  fact,"  and  this  character  of  evidence  is  ex- 
pressly excluded  by  Section  785,  B.  &  C.  Conip,,  which  provides 
that  the  inference  must  be  founded  (1)  on  a  fact  legally  proved 
and  (2)  on  such  a  deduction  from  that  fact  as  is  warranted  by  a 
consideration  of  the  usual  propensities  or  passions  of  man,  the 
particular  propensities  or  passions  of  the  person  whose  act  is  in 
question,  the  course  of  business  or  the  course  of  nature.  The 
same  doctrine  is  applied  in  State  vs.  Hembree,  54  Oregon,  463, 
and  in  Lintner  vs.  Wiles,  70  Oregon,  350. 

But  it  is  not  intended  to  argue  a  legal  question.  This  rule  is 
not  onh'  the  law  of  the  land  but  it  is  the  law  of  the  human  mind. 
The  question  was  not  raised  in  this  case  in  the  Supreme  Court 
or  it  must  have  resulted  in  a  reversal.  The  consequences  of  a 
disregard  of  this  rule  are  derived  from  human  experience;  it  is 
an  every-day  rule  used  by  all  prudent  persons  in  their  own 
affairs  and  in  their  judgment  of  others.  No  prudent  man  would 
make  an  important  decision  in  his  own  business  upon  a  conjec- 
ture, and  no  just  man  would  condemn  another  upon  an  inference 
that  might  or  might  not  be  true.  With  this  rule  of  ordinary  rea- 
soning in  mind,  let  us  examine  the  evidence. 

If  Pender  took  the  paper  out  of  the  postoffice  on  Labor  Day 
there  is  a  justifiable  inference  that  he  intended  it  should  be 
delivered  to  Mrs.  Wehrman.  The  evidence  is  undisputed  that 
Pender  lived  five  or  six  miles  from  Scappoose,  that  the  Wehr- 
mans  lived  about  a  mile  further  on,  and  that  a  box  was  kept  at 
Pender's  cabin  where  the  neighbors  brought  the  mail  of  the 
neighborhood  and  placed  it  for  their  convenience.  Now,  the 
fact  relied  on  to  prove  Pender's  guilt  was  that  he  went  to  the 
cabin.  If  he  did  not  go  to  the  cabin  he  was  not  the  murderer. 
His  presence  at  the  cabin  is  the  fact  from  which  guilt  is  to  be 
inferred,  but  that  he  went  to  the  cabin  at  all  is  inferred  only  from 
the  fact  that  he  got  the  paper  out  of  the  postoffice.  It  is  one 
inference  drawn  from  another  inference  but  an  inference  estab- 
lishing innocence  is  the  more  reasonable  inference,  that  is  to  say, 

that  he  did  what  he  and  his  neighbors  were  accustomed  to  do 

put  the  paper  in  the  box  at  his  home,  so  of  the  two  inferences,  to 
find  him  guilty,  the  jury  would  have  to  discard  the  innocent 
inference  and  adopt  the  guilty  inference. 

It  is  not  proved,  therefore,  that  Pender  went  to  the  cabin  and 
if  that  is  not  proved  the  whole  postoffice  circumstances  is  out  of 
the  case. 

It  will  not  do  to  infer  that  Pender  took  the  paper  to  the  cabin 


82  Why  Some  Men  Kill 

a  mile  beyond  his  place  upon  the  theory  or  supposition  that  he 
had  a  criminal  intent  against  Mrs.  Wehrman,  for  that  is  to 
assume  the  fact  in  issue;  it  is  reasoning  in  a  circle.  The  crimi- 
nal intent  must  be  derived  from  a  fact,  not  the  fact  inferred 
from  a  supposed  criminal  intent. 

We  have  assumed  that  the  delivery  of  the  paper  to  Pender 
on  Labor  Day  was  proved,  but  it  was  not.  The  testimony  was  too 
uncertain  about  that  to  be  the  basis  of  any  certain  conclusion. 
To  test  the  question,  suppose  the  question  whether  Pender  took 
the  paper  to  the  cabin  were  the  only  question  in  issue.  Suppose 
a  friendly  wager  about  that  stripped  the  question  of  all  those 
suggestions  and  prejudices  growing  out  of  the  crime  and  say 
whether  it  has  been  proved  even  in  a  case  of  small  importance 
that  it  was  Pender  who  got  the  paper  or  Pender  who  took  the 
paper  to  the  cabin,  or  whether  in  fact  it  was  not  delivered  to  the 
cabin  by  an  innocent  person  on  some  other  day  before  Labor 
Day.  But  there  is  still  another  inference  intervening  before  the 
final  conclusion.  It  is  inferred  that  the  person  who  delivered  the 
paper  at  the  cabin  did  the  killing;  no  fact  of  time  or  circum- 
stance justifies  such  a  conclusion — the  probabilities  are  all  the 
other  way.  It  was  a  possibility,  of  course,  but  it  could  just  as 
well  happen  that  a  neighbor,  Pender  or  another,  passing  by,  left 
the  paper  and  that  the  murderer  afterwards  made  the  visit  and 
committed  the  murder. 

The  second  principal  fact  relied  on  is  the  circumstance  of  the 
pistol.  It  was  a  38-calibre;  that  is  a  common  size  and  is  not 
sufficient  to  identify  of  itself  any  particular  pistol,  but  a  par- 
ticular pistol — the  Riley-Hassen  pistol  is  supposed  to  be  identi- 
fied as  the  fatal  weapon.  For  the  present,  let  us  suppose  the 
identification  is  complete;  it  was  kept  in  a  trunk; there  is  evidence 
that  it  was  taken  out  of  the  trunk  by  somebody  during  the  ab- 
sence of  the  owners  after  6  o'clock  on  Labor  Day,  but  there  is  not 
the  slightest  evidence  that  Pender  took  it;  there  is  no  fact  proved 
tending  to  show  that  he  took  it.  The  inference  that  he  took  it  is 
based  upon  the  fact  that  he  knew  that  Riley  and  Hassen  owned 
such  a  pistol  because  he  had  borrowed  it  and  returned  it  some- 
time before.  It  is  no  more  to  be  inferred  that  he  took  it  than 
that  anybody  else  with  the  same  knowledge  took  it — no  stronger 
evidence  against  Pender  than  against  the  owners  of  the  pistol 
themselves.  They  had  the  pistol  and  could  have  taken  it  on 
Sunday  or  Monday  and  killed  the  woman  with  it,  and  that  is  the 
most  that  can  be  said  as  to  Pender,  that  he  could  have  done  it. 


Judge  Pipes'  Brief  83 

It  is  not  meant  here  that  the  evidence  even  looks  towards  those 
men  and  their  friends  would  doubtless  be  indignant  at  the  sug- 
gestion, and  justifiably  so.  But  is  Pender  in  a  different  case 
merely  because  he  is  accused  and  they  are  not?  Let  us  again 
suppose  that  Pender's  getting  the  pistol  was  the  only  issue;  that 
the  owners  had  missed  the  pistol  and  had  charged  Pender  with 
stealing  it.  Would  any  court  or  jury  sustain  a  conviction  of 
theft  upon  the  proof  that  the  accused  knew  where  the  pistol 
was  and  could  have  taken  it?  And  yet  the  inference  that  he  did 
take  it  is  the  foundation  and  the  only  foundation  of  the  conclu- 
sion therefrom  that  Pender  murdered  the  woman  with  that 
pistol.  If  you  put  the  pistol  out  of  the  case  and  the  mail  circum- 
stance out  of  the  case  you  have  put  Pender  out  of  the  case. 

We  have  assumed  that  it  is  completely  proved  that  the  Riley- 
Hassen  pistol  did  the  killing,  but  in  our  opinion  the  proof  is  not 
worthj^  of  serious  consideration;  it  is  based  mainly  upon  the 
testimony  of  Levings,  as  an  expert,  that  the  bullet  was  marked 
by  a  powder  pit  in  the  barrel  of  the  pistol.  Levings  was  the  pri- 
vate detective  who  worked  up  the  case.  Admitting  that  some 
sleuths  try  to  be  honest  and  fair,  it  nevertheless  is  common 
knowledge  that  the  strong  prejudice  they  come  to  have  in  a  case 
and  their  professional  pride  tincture  their  evidence,  to  say  the 
least,  either  consciously  or  unconsciously.  This  is  so  when  they 
testify  about  tangible  and  proved  facts;  it  is  more  so  when  the 
evidence  is  an  opinion  only.  Levings'  opinion  is  offset  by  that 
of  another  expert  to  the  contrarj^  but  it  is  offset  by  the  simplest 
facts  of  common  knowledge.  Here  is  a  bullet  that  was  shot  into 
a  woman's  head  and  met  with  enough  resistance  in  its  course  to 
be  stopped  by  the  flesh  and  bones  when  fired  at  a  few  inches 
distance.  To  say  that  a  soft  leaden  bullet  would  show  no  marks 
or  abrasion  from  being  so  stopped  is  against  experience  and  to 
say  that  any  human  eye  could  from  these  marks  distinguish  a 
mark  made  by  a  powder  pit  in  the  barrel  is  to  task  credulity. 
It  is  also  obvious  that  the  pit  would  not  mark  the  bullet  unless 
its  edges  were  raised,  which  is  improbable.  But  it  is  not  neces- 
sary to  dwell  on  this  feature,  for  as  we  have  shown  there  is  not 
a  fact  proved  that  tends  to  establish  in  the  slightest  degree  that 
Pender  got  the  pistol  from  the  trunk. 

The  third  circumstance  is  the  marks  on  Pender's  face.  Assum- 
ing the  existence  of  the  marks,  it  is  inferred  from  them,  without 
any  proof,  that  there  was  a  struggle  and  that  the  woman 
scratched  him;  it  is  inferred  that  the  marks  were  made  by  finger 


84  Why  Some  Men  Kill 

nails,  and  all  of  this  is  based  upon  the  previous  inference  built 
upon  inferences  that  Pender  was  at  the  cabin,  which  we  have 
shown  is  not  a  fact.  That  the  marks  were  made  by  finger  nails 
at  all  is  a  poor  inference  and  disputed  by  Pender,  who  explains 
them  by  stating  that  he  had  a  breaking  out.  The  weakness  of 
this  testimony  was  appreciated  because  it  was  sought  to  be 
strengthened  by  evidence  that  the  woman  had  foreign  matter 
under  her  nails.  It  is  wonderful  that  such  evidence  should  be 
seriously  offered;  it  would  be  remarkable  if  a  housewife,  at  the 
end  of  a  day  of  work,  would  not  have  foreign  matter  under  her 
nails.  The  inference  again  is  that  the  foreign  matter  was  cuticle 
from  Pender's  face.  It  is  difficult  to  be  patient  with  such  evi- 
dence where  a  man's  life  at  first  and  now  his  life-long  liberty,  is 
at  stake. 

It  is  stating  the  case  as  strongly  as  it  can  be  stated  against 
Pender  to  say  that  Pender  might  have  got  the  paper  from  the 
postoffice  on  Labor  Day,  he  might  have  taken  it  past  the  box 
and  his  own  house  to  the  Wehrman  cabin,  he  might  have,  on  his 
way,  stolen  the  Riley-Hassen  pistol,  he  might  have  assaulted  the 
woman,  and  upon  her  resistance  he  might  have  shot  and  killed 
her  and  her  boy.     But  that  case  is  purely  conjectured  and  not 
proved  by  any  evidence  worthy  of  the  name.     But  if  the  facts 
to  which  the  testimony  looks  as  to  the  mail  and  the  pistol  and 
the  face  marks  were  all  true  and  clearly  established,  there  is 
between  these  facts  and  the  conclusion  of  guilt  a  series  of  infer- 
ences and  conjecture,  no  one  of  which  is  certain,  and  a  reason- 
ing resulting  in  a  belief  of  Pender's  guilt  is  violative  not  only  of 
the  legal  rule  but  of  the  rule  of  common  sense.     We  shall  be 
asked  how  it  comes  that  a  jury  found  the  defendant  guilty  upon 
such  flimsy  pretext.     A  long  experience  enables  this  writer  to 
give  the  reason:     In  theory  of  law  the  defendant  must  be  con- 
victed beyond  a  reasonable  doubt  and  the  fact  of  the  indict- 
ment against  him  is  not  to  be  taken  as  evidence;  in  actual  prac- 
tice, the  contrary  is  the  case.    The  attitude  of  mind  of  juries  and 
of  everybody  else  is  that  when  a  person  is  accused  of  crime,  the 
burden  is  on  him  to  show  that  he  is  not  guilty.    The  inquiry  is  to 
see  if  the  facts  in  evidence  against  the  accused  are  consistent 
with  his  guilt.    If  they  are,  juries,  unless  carefully  instructed,  are 
apt  to  assume  his  guilt,  especially  where  no  one  else  is  suspected. 
But  that  is  neither  the  legal  nor  the  just  way  to  look  at  the  evi- 
dence; the  true,  safe  and  just  process  is  to  inquire  if  the  facts 
in  evidence  are  consistent  also  with  innocence.    If  they  are,  the 


Judge  Pipes'  Brief  85 

accused  is  entitled  before  the  law  and  before  the  court  of  human 
justice  to  go  free.  Pender  was  convicted  because  the  jury  ac- 
cepted all  of  the  inferences  that  were  against  him  and  rejected 
all  that  were  in  his  favor  and  so  finding,  since  he  could  have 
been  guilty,  they  found  him  guilty.  The  rational  way  is  to  say 
that  any  innocent  man  might  have  got  the  paper  out  of  the  mail, 
might  have  known  of  the  Riley-Hassen  pistol,  might  have  had 
scratches  on  his  face,  and  still  be  innocent  of  this  horrible  crime, 
and  that  is  exactly  Pender's  case.  It  is  urged  against  this  pardon, 
as  we  understand,  that  it  is  not  the  province  of  the  executive  to 
review  the  decision  of  the  jury  and  of  the  Supreme  Court,  but 
the  pardoning  power  has  no  limits  except  the  conscience  of  the 
Governor;  he  is  the  last  of  the  instrumentalities  of  the  state  to 
stand  between  innocence  and  unjust  punishment;  he  is  as  much 
charged  on  his  conscience  with  the  duty  of  preventing  injustice 
as  the  jury  courts.  It  is  true  that  where  conflicting  evidence 
has  been  passed  on  by  juries  and  questions  of  law  by  courts  that 
the  executive  is  justified  in  refusing  to  disturb  convictions  upon 
mere  review  of  the  evidence.  But  where  there  has  been  a  plain 
miscarriage  of  justice  and  a  conviction  upon  conjecture  and  such 
insufficient  proof  as  in  this  case,  it  is  within  the  province  and  it 
is  the  duty  of  the  Governor  to  say  that  the  terrible  injustice  of  a 
life-time  shall  not  be  suffered  by  a  man  who  is  innocent.  We 
have  read  the  decision  of  the  Supreme  Court  in  this  case,  where 
it  will  be  assumed  the  evidence  is  recited  as  strongly  as  possible 
against  Pender.  The  principal  question  before  the  court  was 
whether  there  was  any  evidence  of  the  slightest  kind  sufficient 
to  be  submitted  to  the  jury.  The  court  thought  there  was,  but  the 
court  did  not  occupy  the  same  position  as  the  Governor;  it  did 
not  and  could  not  consider  whether  Pender  was  innocent  or 
guilty  but  only  whether  error  had  been  committed  in  the  case. 
The  Governor's  province  is  to  make  such  an  examination,  not 
only  of  the  evidence  in  the  case  but  extraneous  evidence  as  to 
satisfy  him  whether  justice  requires  a  pardon.  If  it  does,  then  a 
legal  duty  arises  and  it  is  his  duty;  the  case  is  up  to  him.  He  is 
not  bound  by  previous  proceedings  against  his  own  conscience 
and  judgment.  That  is  what  the  pardoning  power  is  for;  indeed 
that  power  exists  in  all  civilized  countries  because  it  is  recog- 
nized that  judicial  procedure  sometimes  results  in  mistakes  and 
it  is  the  crowning  virtue  of  the  humane  age  that  justice  shall 
never  be  barred  but  that  every  man  shall  have  somewhere  and 


86  Why  Some  Men  Kill 

all  the  time  a  chance  for  his  life  and  his  liberty  when  he  has 
been  unjustly  convicted. 

There  is  another  consideration  to  which  Pender  is  entitled. 
The  crime  in  this  case  was  unnatural  and  proves  a  debased 
nature.  No  normal  man  could  commit  it.  The  murderer  in  this 
case  was  a  murderer  at  heart,  a  man  of  ungoverned  passion  and 
illogical  mind.  It  is  inconceivable  that  a  man  of  thirty-two  years 
who  had  never  evinced  the  peculiar  passions  of  this  murderer 
could  be  guilty  of  the  crime  unless  we  suppose  the  accession  of 
sudden  insanity,  and  it  is  impossible  to  believe  that  this  murder 
would  be  the  only  exhibition  of  his  brutal  nature.  Pender  has 
been  under  the  eye  of  officers  of  the  law  for  seven  years;  in  all 
that  time,  as  we  understand  the  evidence  to  be,  he  has  behaved 
himself  and  has  won  the  confidence  and  respect  of  his  guardians. 
It  would  be  just  as  impossible  for  the  murderer  of  Mrs.  Wehr- 
man  to  have  successfully  stood  that  test  without  a  break  as  it 
would  be  for  a  leopard  to  change  his  spots. 

We  would  not  recommend  a  pardon  of  Pender  if  there  were 
the  least  doubt  in  our  minds  of  his  innocence,  but  a  careful 
examination  of  his  whole  case  convinces  us  that  the  wrong  man 
has  been  convicted  and  that  the  real  murderer  has  escaped 
punishment. 

Martin  L.  Pipes. 


r 


Chapter  XII. 
CHARACTERISTICS  OF  SADISM 


One  of  the  most  shocking  perversities  of  animal  hfe  is  demon- 
strated when  a  mother  kills  her  own  young  soon  after  birth. 
This  is  complete  defeat  of  nature's  plan  of  reproduction,  and  it 
is  caused  by  emotional  disturbance  of  the  mother. 

In  the  human  family  the  most  terrible  perversion  is  shown 
when  the  male  under  the  emotional  stress  of  the  sex  impulse 
kills  the  female.  The  perversion  in  its  milder  forms  is  very  com- 
mon, and  the  emotional  disturbance  caused  by  the  sex  impulse 
includes  an  intense  wish  to  suffer  pain  as  well  as  to  inflict  pain. 
In  the  mentally  unbalanced,  the  feeble-minded,  the  epileptic  and 
in  senile  dementia  this  perversion  shows  the  greatest  violence 
and  is  often  the  cause  of  murder.  This  fact  is  not  generally 
known,  probably  because  the  Anglo  Saxon  race  has  been  taught 
for  centuries  to  hide  under  the  veil  of  silence  everything  touch- 
ing reproduction. 

The  scientific  name  of  this  emotional  disturbance,  amounting 
sometimes  to  an  aberration,  is  algolagnia.  This  describes  a  com- 
plex emotional  state  which  for  practical  purposes  has  been 
divided  and  called  by  two  different  names.  The  desire  to  endure 
suffering  is  called  masochism  from  the  name  of  Sacher-Masoch, 
an  Austrian  novelist,  who  was  a  victim  of  the  desire  for  punish- 
ment at  the  hands  of  his  wife.  He  persuaded  her,  against  her 
wish,  to  whip  him  with  a  whip  having  nails  attached  to  it,  and 
took  great  pleasure  in  his  pain. 

Rousseau  was  also  a  victim  of  this  amazing  perverted  emo- 
tion (see  his  "Confessions")  and  there  have  been  many  cases 
known  to  physicians  and  alienists. 

The  other  perversion  is  known  as  Sadism.  Here  the  patient 
desires  to  inflict  punishment  such  as  whipping  or  strangling  or 
causing  the  flowing  of  blood.  This  is  the  perversion  which  leads 
to  murder  in  extreme  cases.  The  murder  of  the  Hill  family  in 
Portland  in  1911,  which  is  described  in  Chapters  14  and  15,  was 
a  case  of  Sadism. 

The  name  comes  from  the  Marquis  de  Sade  who  lived  in 
France  over  a  hundred  years  ago  and  whom  Napoleon  had  con- 
fined in  an  asylum  for  the  insane.  But  the  perverse  and  wicked 
conduct  which  made  Marquis  de  Sade  infamous  was  told  about 
three  hundred  years  before  de  Sade  was  born  in  the  horridly 


88  Why  Some  Men  Kill 

fascinating  tale  of  Bluebeard,  who  cut  off  the  heads  of  numerous 
wives  because  of  their  curiosity  and  disobedience. 

Bluebeard's  life  of  wicked  and  bloody  love  must  have  had  a 
thrilling  appeal  for  men  and  women,  witness  its  being  worked 
into  a  clever  drama  and  also  made  a  part  of  a  popular  opera. 
The  historic  original  was  Chevalier  Raoul,  who  was  made  a 
Marshal  of  France  in  1429.  He  was  a  brave  soldier,  but  cruel 
and  wicked,  and  he  delighted  in  corrupting  young  persons  of 
both  sexes  and  afterwards  murdering  them  and  using  their 
blood  in  diabolical  incantations. 

There  is  a  sure  foundation  in  human  nature  for  these  tales, 
and  that  is  the  perverse  desire  to  inflict  pain  upon  a  loved 
object,  possibly  from  a  wish  to  absolutely  dominate  the  object 
of  desire.  Where  the  individual  is  mentally  and  nervously  ab- 
normal and  unbalanced  this  desire  to  inflict  pain  becomes  an 
aberration  or  a  species  of  insanity.  Such  a  person  under  the 
influence  of  sexual  passion  may  commit  murder  by  strangling  or 
by  stabbing  or  cutting  with  any  sharp  instrument.  The  effusion 
of  the  victim's  blood  seems  to  gratify  this  insane  perversity 
which,  since  the  time  of  the  Marquis  de  Sade,  has  been  called 
Sadism.  This  pathological  occurrence  either  precedes  or  follows 
copulation,  but  occasionally  it  becomes  a  substitute  for  sexual 
indulgence.  Lombroso  discusses  the  case  of  Verzeni,  who  said  in 
his  last  confession,  "I  had  an  unspeakable  delight  in  strangling 
women,"  and  referring  to  one  of  his  victims  by  name,  said,  "I 
took  great  delight  in  drinking  Matta's  blood." 

A  number  of  years  ago  the  civilized  world  was  intensely 
aroused  by  the  "Jack  the  ripper"  or  Whitechapel  murders  in 
London,  which  were  the  work  of  a  Sadie.  The  perverted  acts 
of  this  insane  devil  defy  description. 

In  the  last  seven  years  there  have  been  quite  a  number  of 
sadistic  murders  in  the  United  States.  In  the  spring  of  1911  the 
people  of  Portland  were  horrified  by  the  strangling  of  little 
Barbara  Holzman  in  Albina.  In  June  of  the  same  year  the  Hill 
family  in  Ardenwald  were  chopped  to  death  with  an  axe  by  a 
Sadie.    Four  persons  were  killed. 

In  August  of  the  same  year,  1911,  the  Goble  family  of  Rainier, 
Washington,  were  chopped  to  death  with  an  axe.  Two  persons 
were  killed. 

Last  August  Lynn  George  J.  Kelly  confessed  to  killing  a  fam- 
ily of  six  persons  at  Valisca,  Iowa,  with  an  axe  several  years 
ago.    The  testimony  at  the  trial  showed  the  nature  of  the  Sadie 


Nature  of  Sadism  89 

in  unmistakable  fashion.  Attorney  General  Havner  of  Des 
Moines  sent  me  a  copy  of  Kelly's  confession,  which,  however,  he 
repudiated  at  the  trial.  There  is  a  great  deal  of  interest  in  this 
confession  to  a  student  of  sadistic  murders,  but  the  man  was  a 
minister  and  the  crime  was  so  overwhelmingly  terrible  that  the 
jury  of  laymen  could  not  believe  that  a  minister  would  commit 
such  a  wholesale  slaughter  without  an  apparent  motive. 

In  1913  Dr.  Knabe,  a  woman  physician  in  Indianapolis  had 
her  throat  cut  in  her  own  apartments  by  a  Sadie. 

In  1914  in  Sacramento,  California,  a  young  girl  was  strangled 
by  a  Sadie. 

In  February,  1915,  there  was  a  sadistic  murder  at  the  county 
farm  in  Multnomah  County  where  the  victim's  throat  was  cut. 

It  was  about  the  same  time  that  there  was  an  attempted 
sadistic  murder  of  a  woman  at  La  Grande,  Oregon.  The  weapon 
used  in  this  case  was  an  axe,  but  the  victim  finally  recovered. 

This  limited  number  of  cases  is  enough  to  indicate  the  patho- 
logical character  of  sadistic  murder.  It  is  literally  an  insane  per- 
version of  the  sex  impulse  and  in  these  cases  where  it  proceeds 
to  the  point  of  assassination  it  is  accomplished  by  strangling,  or 
cutting  or  chopping  or  stabbing.  Kraft-Ebing,  who  is  perhaps  the 
oldest  and  best  recognized  authority  on  sadism,  believes  that  the 
Sadie's  motor  centers  are  involved  to  a  great  degree  in  his  aber- 
ration and  that  the  unnecessary  violence  of  the  assassinations 
are  thus  accounted  for.  All  of  the  authorities  on  the  subject, 
Kraft-Ebing,  Lombroso,  Dr.  Thoinot,  August  Forel,  Havelock 
EUis,  Iwan  Block,  Dr.  Healey  and  Dr.  Jacoby,  agree  that  the  acts 
of  a  Sadie  in  his  frenzy  are  those  of  an  abnormal  and  perverted 
being  who,  like  other  insane  persons,  seems  to  be  only  partly 
conscious  of  what  he  is  doing.  Such  are  the  characteristic  quali- 
ties of  Sadism,  which  in  feeble-minded  and  unbalanced  men  has 
often  led  to  murder. 

There  was  no  evidence  given  in  the  trial  of  Mr.  Pender  for 
the  murder  of  Mrs.  Wehrman  and  her  child  tending  to  indicate 
that  he  was  a  Sadie,  but  this  trial  was  unusual  both  because  of 
the  lack  of  evidence  and  because  of  a  highly  inflamed  public 
sentiment  against  the  accused.  Stories  were  widely  circulated  in 
Columbia  County,  especially,  that  Arthur  Pender  was  a  Sadie 
and  that  he  boasted  of  mistreating  Filipino  girls  and  then  killing 
them.  Like  the  old  tales  of  pirates  and  the  stories  of  soldiers 
returned  from  foreign  conquest  these  yarns  were  greedily  lis- 
tened to  and  swallowed,  for  Pender  had  been  a  soldier  and  had 


90  Why  Some  Men  Kill 

fought  in  the  United  States  army  against  the  savages  and  bar- 
barians in  the  Phihppine  Islands,  and  now  a  woman  and  child 
had  been  brutally  murdered  and  Pender  lived  only  a  mile  away. 

According  to  the  popular  notions  of  circumstantial  evidence 
that  was  very  damaging.  Nobody  knows  who  started  these  stories 
of  Mr.  Pender's  wild  doings  in  the  Philippine  Islands  but  they 
were  put  in  circulation  by  somebody  who  wanted  to  explain  the 
murder  of  Mrs.  Wehrman.  Even  the  prosecuting  attorney,  Mr. 
Tongue,  did  not  hesitate  to  build  on  this  foundation.  He  has 
several  times  told  that  Pender's  wife  in  seeking  a  divorce  accused 
Pender  of  threatening  her  with  a  knife.  However,  the  divorce 
was  obtained  by  default,  and  so  no  evidence  was  given  about  the 
"cruel  and  inhuman"  treatment  which  is  so  commonly  charged 
in  divorce  proceedin£,'s.  Without  proof  of  sadistic  tendencies  in 
the  murder  of  Mrs.  Wehrman  and  her  child  this  theory  falls  to 
the  ground.  Pressing  the  finger  on  a  revolver  trigger  and  caus- 
ing an  explosion  of  gunpowder  caused  Mrs.  Wehrman's  death, 
while  sadistic  murder  since  the  days  of  Bluebeard  has  involved 
strangling  or  cutting  or  stabbing  or  chopping  the  victim  to 
death  as  illustrated  in  the  cases  referred  to  in  this  chapter. 


Chapter  XIII 
PERSONAL  CHARACTER  OF  JOHN  ARTHUR  PENDER 

It's  always  a  matter  of  great  interest  to  know  what  kind  of 
a  person  the  man  is  who  has  been  accused  of  crime.  The  general 
pubhc  is  curious,  and  the  prosecuting  officers  and  the  court  and 
jailers  go  verj'^  far  in  coming  to  a  conclusion  about  the  prisoner's 
guilt  or  innocence  from  their  personal  impressions  of  the  man. 
This  is  especially  true  where  there  is  nothing  but  circumstan- 
tial evidence  to  connect  him  with  the  crime,  for  everyone  knows 
that  circumstantial  evidence  is  apt  to  be  a  delusion  and  a  snare 
in  the  every  day  affairs  of  life.  Of  course  it  arouses  suspicion, 
and  where  a  terrible  crime  has  been  committed  it  is  worth  while 
to  test  the  suspicions  out  to  see  if  they  amount  to  proof. 

Personal  impressions  from  a  close  acquaintance  give  us  all 
our  best  means  of  judging  character  unless  there  is  direct  evi- 
dence to  the  contrary  That  is  why  a  prisoner's  law^^ers  always 
make  up  their  minds  before  they  finish  a  case  whether  the 
accused  person  is  guilty  or  innocent.  Criminal  lawyers  say  that 
when  they  are  defending  a  guilty  man  he  will  always  give  him- 
self away  in  some  trifling  detail  even  though  he  protest  his  inno- 
cence. Guilt  is  alwaj^s  trying  to  excuse  or  explain,  or  throw 
dust  on  the  trail,  and  it  reasons  from  guilty  knowledge.  That 
attitude  alone  is  enough  to  satisfy  a  prisoner's  lawyer. 

On  the  other  hand  an  innocent  person  accused  of  crime  does 
not  do  the  little  self-revealing  things  which  the  guilty  man  does. 
He  may  be  unable  to  prove  his  innocence  but  the  most  intimate 
acquaintance  with  him  does  not  suggest  guilt. 

In  the  case  of  Arthur  Pender  all  of  his  acquaintances  and 
friends  believe  him  to  be  an  innocent  man.  His  lawyers  have 
always  been  satisfied  that  he  is  innocent.  Arthur  Pender's 
mother  and  sisters,  in  the  many  little  indefinable  ways  that  a 
man's  family  always  indicate  their  feelings,  show  beyond  a  doubt 
that  he  has  been  a  good  son  and  a  kind-hearted  brother. 

Mr.  Pender  is  just  40  years  old  and  has  spent  nearly  eight 
years  in  prison.  He  served  in  the  Spanish-American  war,  and 
Mr.  H.  E.  Coolidge,  now  cashier  in  the  La  Grande,  Ore.,  National 
Bank,  says  of  him :  "I  knew  Pender  as  a  soldier  in  the  Philip- 
pines in  1898-99.  He  was  a  member  of  the  same  battery  and 
one  of  the  gun  detachment  of  which  I  had  charge  as  chief  of 
section.    He  was  a  splendid  soldier  and  of  such  a  character  and 


92  Why  Some  Men  Kill 

disposition  that  he  held  the  confidence  and  respect  of  his  com- 
rades at  all  times.  His  unselfish  devotion  to  duty  and  manly 
conduct  marked  him  as  the  best  type  of  American  soldier.  Dur- 
ing all  my  intimate  association  with  this  man,  I  never  knew  of 
a  single  act  of  his  that  would  reflect  in  any  way  upon  his  record 
as  a  soldier  or  his  character  as  a  moral  and  upright  American 
citizen." 

The  Captain  of  Pender's  company  also  speaks  of  him  in  the 
highest  terms  both  as  a  man  and  as  a  soldier  who  did  not  hesi- 
tate to  risk  his  life  again  and  again  in  the  Philippines. 

A  prosecutor  in  Utah  and  later  in  the  United  States  Attor- 
ney General's  office  refers  to  Mr.  Pender  as  a  normal  man  of 
good  instincts  whom  he  had  known  personally  for  many  years, 
and  he  voluntarily  pointed  out  that  such  men  very  rarely  com- 
mitted crimes. 

My  own  impressions  of  him  are  that  he  is  an  amiable  and 
faithful  fellow  with  a  kind  heart  for  the  children  and  women 
folks  of  his  family.  He  is  not  brilliant  but  is  an  intelligent  man 
and  one  who  inspires  confidence,  and  he  is  about  as  far  removed 
from  the  criminal  type  as  it  is  easy  to  imagine.  Even  the  prose- 
cuting attorney,  who  is  notorious  as  a  zealous  prosecutor,  has 
said  of  Mr.  Pender  in  my  hearing,  "I  have  a  doubt  of  his  guilt." 

Governor  Withycombe  has  said  to  me  on  different  occasions 
and  to  others  also,  that  he  believed  Pender  to  be  innocent,  but 
that  he  did  not  feel  justified  in  pardoning  him.  He  said  that 
people  in  Columbia  County  feel  very  bitter  about  Pender.  My 
own  conviction  is  that  they  would  feel  more  bitter  about  Sierks 
— father  and  son — if  they  knew  the  facts. 

There  has  always  been  a  grave  question  in  the  minds  of 
thoughtful  people  throughout  the  state  as  to  Mr.  Pender's  guilt. 
To  people  outside  of  the  community,  and  to  some  of  the  intelli- 
gent citizens  of  Columbia  County,  there  did  not  appear  to  be 
any  evidence  which  necessarily  connected  Pender  with  the  crime. 
Mrs.  Wehrman  and  her  child  were  most  brutally — nay,  fiendish- 
ly— murdered  by  some  being  who  showed  no  more  restraint  than 
ape.  Somebody  must  have  done  it,  but  there  was  no  evidence 
to  show  that  Pender  was  even  away  from  his  tent  house  on 
the  night  the  prosecution  claimed  that  the  murder  was  com- 
mitted (and  as  a  matter  of  fact  nobody  knows  whether  the  mur- 
der was  committed  on  Sunday  or  Monday).  There  was  certain 
negative  evidence  that  Pender  did  not  have  a  light  in  his  tent 
Monday  evening,  September  4,  but  the  witness  testified  to  this 


Mr.  Pender's  Innocence  93 

about  the  first  of  June,  1912,  and  again  in  1913.     This  was  all 
the  prosecution  had  to  go  on. 

THE    FINAL    OUTCOME 

Eventually  it  must  be  recognized  that  Mr.  Pender  is  innocent 
and  that  he  should  be  released  from  the  penitentiary.  My  own 
personal  interest  in  Pender  is  simply  that  of  the  President  of 
the  Oregon  Prisoners'  Aid  Society,  a  body  of  men  and  women 
who  have  taken  a  very  active  part  for  many  years  in  securing 
better  criminal  laws  and  more  humane  prison  administration. 
My  predecessor  in  office  was  Mr.  Ben  Selling,  now  one  of  the 
directors  of  the  Society. 

It  is  one  of  the  recognized  duties  of  the  Society  to  bring  to 
public  attention  miscarriages  of  justice,  not  only  for  the  sake 
of  the  prisoner,  but  especially  to  secure  in  the  future  a  better 
administration  of  the  criminal  law  throughout  the  state.  The 
cases  of  John  Arthur  Pender  and  of  William  Branson  and  Mrs. 
William  Booth  are  noticeable  only  because  they  have  aroused 
interest  through  the  conviction  of  these  persons  for  wholly  un- 
provoked murders,  and  because  these  convictions  were  secured 
on  circumstantial  evidence  of  a  very  inconclusive  character.  It 
is  unnecessary  to  point  out  the  dangers  to  the  liberties  of  any 
citizen  if  such  unjustified  convictions  should  stand  after  the 
actual  criminals  have  been  discovered. 

In  the  case  of  Mr.  Pender,  many  highly  intelligent  and  respon- 
sible citizens  of  the  state  are  satisfied  of  his  innocence  as  the 
result  of  this  investigation  and  report,  and  they  have,  after 
studying  the  report,  signed  their  names  to  the  following  state- 
ment in  order  that  the  public  may  know  the  facts. 

This  appeal  to  the  people  of  Oregon  to  petition  the  chief 
executive  to  grant  a  full  pardon  to  John  Arthur  Pender  is  made 
after  mature  consideration  by  each  member  of  the  committee 
of  the  report  of  this  investigation  and  after  receiving  the  advice 
and  counsel  of  former  City  Attorney  Frank  S.  Grant. 

Mr.  Grant  says:  "I  have  examined  the  record  of  the  case  of 
the  State  of  Oregon  against  John  A.  Pender,  convicted  of  the 
murder  of  Mrs.  Frank  Wehrman.  Based  upon  the  examination 
of  the  record,  it  is  my  opinion  that  John  A.  Pender  never  should 
have  been  convicted  of  this  crime." 


Chapter  XIV 
THE  SADISTIC  MURDER  OF  THE  HILL  FAMILY 

On  the  southern  boundary  of  the  City  of  Portland  is  a  suburb 
known  as  Ardenwald,  which  hes  partly  in  each  of  two  counties, 
Multnomah  and  Clackamas.  There  wdnds  through  this  suburb 
a  stream  known  as  Johnson's  Creek,  which  in  its  setting  of  trees 
and  bushes  is  the  delight  of  small  boys  and  the  hoboes  who  like 
to  have  more  or  less  permanent  camps  in  the  neighborhood  of 
a  city.  On  the  Clackamas  side  of  Ardenwald  there  is  a  grove 
of  perhaps  40  acres  of  first  growth  timber  containing  many  huge 
fir  trees.  The  Southern  Pacific  Railroad  running  south  from 
Portland  marks  the  w^estern  boundary  of  this  grove,  which  is 
known  as  Scott's  Woods,  while  at  the  north  end  and  on  the  east 
side  is  the  town  of  Ardenwald.  There  are  comparatively  few 
houses  on  the  east  of  Scott's  Woods  and  here  it  was,  in  the 
spring  of  1911,  that  William  Hill  built  a  cottage  for  his  family 
close  to  some  of  the  old  residences  near  the  south  end  of  the 
woods.  Mr.  Hill  was  a  comparatively  young  man  of  32  years. 
He  had  been  married  but  a  short  time  to  a  Mrs.  Rintoul,  a  widow 
of  about  his  own  age.  Mrs.  Rintoul  had  two  children,  Philip 
Rintoul,  aged  8  years,  and  Dorothy,  aged  6  years 

Mr.  and  Mrs.  Hill  with  their  two  children  moved  into  the  cot- 
tage about  the  first  of  May,  1911,  before  it  was  completed.  The 
Hills  had  two  near  neighbors  on  the  south,  the  Matthews  famil}^ 
and  the  Harvey  family,  both  within  a  few  hundred  feet.  The 
houses  all  faced  the  road  running  along  the  east  side  of  Scott's 
Woods,  and  the  neighbors  all  used  this  road  in  walking  to  the 
Ardenwald  station  on  the  suburban  electric  line  to  Portland. 

On  June  8,  1911,  in  the  afternoon,  Mrs.  Hill  went  to  Portland 
and  saw  her  father  and  brother  in  their  law  office.  Mrs.  Hill 
w^as  apparently  much  disturbed  about  something,  but  on  account 
of  some  interruptions  neither  her  father  nor  brother  learned 
what  had  happened. 

They  never  saw  her  again  alive,  for  some  time  during  that 
night  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Hill  and  their  two  children,  Philip  and  Doro- 
thy, were  chopped  to  death  with  an  axe  taken  from  the  porch  of 
Joe  Delk's  house.  Mr.  Delk  lived  with  his  family  one-fourth  of 
a  mile  to  the  north  of  the  Hills,  and  he  had  sharpened  his  axe 
that  evening  and  left  it  on  the  step  of  a  side  porch  of  his  house. 

Some  sexual  perverts  of  the  type  known  as  Sadies  had  either 


I.i).  Hamsky.  alias  Frctlerick  Alexander,  alias  Alexander  Raiiili)rd,  alias  William 
l-lyiiii,  and  known  to  many  small  boys  as  "Nutty  Ed.,"  who  was  accusod  by  William 
Higgin  of  being  his  companion  in  killing  the  Hill  I'amily  in  Ardenwald  on  .Uiiie  8, 
1911.  Ramsey  is  a  high-grade  moron,  and  has  lived  in  the  jungles  I'oi-  years.  It  is 
knoNxn  that  lUggin  and  Ramsey  were  living  together  in  the  .jungle  in  lilll  when  this 
sadistie    nnirder    nl'    the    Hill     family    was    eommittcd. 


The  Hill  Murder  95 

taken  the  axe,  or  had  it  brought  to  tliem  by  a  companion,  and 
they  had  then  used  it  in  wiping  out  a  whole  family  as  a  prelim- 
inary to  a  pathological  sexual  orgy. 

The  members  ol"  the  Hill  lamily  were  murdered  in  their  beds 
and  the  bloody  axe  was  left  standing  at  the  foot  of  the  cot  on 
which  lay  the  body  of  little  Dorothy  Rintoul.  The  axe  was  posi- 
tively identified  by  the  owner  who  lived  about  one-fourth  of  a 
mile  towards  the  city  from  the  Hill  home.  Mrs.  Matthews  dis- 
covered the  murder  at  about  8  o'clock  A,  M.  on  the  9lh  of  June. 
The  windows  had  been  covered  with  garments  and  pieces  of 
cloth  which  indicated  that  the  murderers  had  spent  some  time 
in  the  house  and  that  they  had  a  light. 

The  surgeon  at  the  coroner's  inquest  testified  in  part  as  fol- 
lows : 

Question.     "What  wounds  did  j'ou  find  on  Mr.  Hill?" 

A.  "His  face  and  head  were  completely  chopped  to  pieces 
on  the  right  side;  especially  on  the  right  side  above  the  eye, 
deforming  whole  face." 

Q.     "What  wounds  did  you  find  on  Mrs.  Hill?" 

A.  "There  was  a  wound  starting  in  the  middle  of  the  eye- 
brow above  the  right  eye,  extending  clear  across;  the  wliole  skull 
was  fractured.  There  was  a  cut  on  left  side  of  nose  down  into 
the  bone,  breaking  out  front  upper  teeth.  Her  lower  jaw  was 
broken  on  left  side." 

Q.     "What  wounds  did  you  find  on  Dorothy  Hintoul?" 

A.  "There  was  cut  on  angle  of  right  eye,  extending  up  for 
three  inches,  fracturing  skull,  going  through  it.  Cuts  were  done 
with  sharp  edge  of  axe.  There  was  a  cut  two  inches  above  left 
eye  extending  three  inches,  went  through  skull;  done  with  sharp 
edge  of  axe,  a  blow  on  the  back  of  the  head  completely  smashed 
skull." 

Q.     "What  wounds  did  you  find  on  Philip  Rintoul?" 

A.  "Whole  skull  battered  in;  several  bruises  along  side  of 
right  eye  and  forehead.  Occipital  bone  in  skull  only  bone  not 
broken.  Right  arm  bloody;  shows  bloody  finger  prints  on  arm. 
Head  all  mashed  over  to  left  side.  Looks  like  wound  was  caused 
by  side  of  axe." 

Q.  "Was  there  evidence  that  someone  had  washed  U])  before 
leaving  house?" 

A.     "Yes." 

Q.     "Could  you  tell  how  long  the  bodies  had  been  dead?" 

A.     "No;  it's  hard  to  say." 


96  Why  Some  Men  Kill 

Q.     "Any  bloody  finger  prints  on  bodies?" 

A.    "Yes." 

Q.    "Other  than  on  the  boy's  arm?" 

A.     "Yes,  several." 

The  testimony  of  the  surgeon  also  showed  that  the  bodies  of 
Mrs.  Hill  and  her  -6year-old  daughter,  Dorothy,  had  been  assault- 
ed in  outrageous  fashion.  The  murderers  left  conclusive  proof 
that  they  were  not  only  Sadies,  or  insane  sexual  perverts,  who, 
like  the  Whitechapel  murderers  in  London  years  ago,  delighted 
in  the  effusion  of  the  blood  of  their  victims,  but  were  the  lineal 
degenerate  descendants  of  the  vicious  inhabitants  of  ancient 
Sodom. 

However,  there  was  no  clue  whatever  as  to  the  Sadies  who 
had  destroyed  this  whole  family  and  who  so  shockingly  muti- 
lated their  bodies.  Several  thousand  dollars  in  rewards  were 
offered  by  the  State  and  by  private  individuals  for  the  detection 
of  the  murderers,  but  aside  from  the  arrest  of  a  neighbor  of  the 
Hills,  whom  the  grand  jury  refused  to  indict  for  the  murder, 
very  little  progress  was  made.  At  the  same  time  public  interest 
was  intense  and  has  continued  in  great  measure  through  the 
years  that  have  elapsed  since  the  murder.  All  the  elements  of 
the  crime  combined  to  stir  the  community.  Public  sympathy  in 
a  murder  of  this  sort  reflects  the  personal  element  of  fear  of 
meeting  a  similar  fate,  which  in  this  case  combined  the  horror 
of  butchery  with  that  of  indecent  assault.  To  aggravate  the  ter- 
ror and  resentment  caused  by  this  ignominous  destruction  of  a 
family  was  added  the  element  of  mystery  which  was  as  complete 
as  if  some  unknown  and  invisible  animals  had  suddenly  demon- 
strated their  presence  by  the  mysterious  destruction  of  the  lives 
of  a  whole  family  of  reputable  citizens. 

Usually  in  cases  of  mysterious  murder  the  motive  is  not  ap- 
parent and  remains  more  or  less  a  matter  of  speculation,  but  in 
the  murder  of  the  Hill  family  the  motive  was  established  abso- 
lutely by  circumstantial  evidence.  There  remains  then  the  prob- 
lem of  discovering  who  were  the  perverted  and  abnormal  men 
who  entered  the  Hill  home  that  night  in  June.  This  is  another 
point  to  be  remembered,  for  abnormality  of  such  a  marked 
character  is  exceedingly  rare.  The  verdict  of  students  of  sexual 
pathology  is  unanimous  in  declaring  that  Sadies  of  this  extreme 
type  are  afflicted  with  defective  nervous  systems  or  defective 
brains  or  both.* 


Note.    Dr.  Jatoby  in  his  recent  volume,  "The  Unsound 


The  Hill  Murder  97 

That  is  not  only  the  conclusion  from  numerous  investigations 
by  specialists,  but  it  is  also  the  verdict  of  common  sense,  be- 
cause only  an  abnormal  being  could  be  guilty  of  such  out- 
rageously abnormal  conduct.  This  narrows  the  field  of  investi- 
gation to  a  search  for  the  abnormal  men  who  were  in  the  imme- 
diate vicinity  of  the  home  of  the  Hills  on  the  night  of  the  mur- 
der. It  is  possible  of  course  that  the  perverted  murderers  were 
birds  of  passage  and  were  in  the  vicinity  only  a  few  hours,  but 
the  probabilities  are  very  strong  that  they  were  thoroughly  fa- 
miliar with  the  neighborhood  and  were  at  least  transient  resi- 
dents. 

Quite  a  number  of  defective  men  were  picked  up  by  sheriffs 
and  questioned  as  to  their  whereabouts  at  the  time  of  the  mur- 
der and  then  were  released.  One  of  the  number  was  a  man  of 
55  years  of  age  by  the  name  of  Ed  Ramsey.  He  claimed  that 
his  true  name  was  Frederick  Alexander.  He  was  what  is  known 
as  a  "jungle"  man,  and  while  he  worked  at  intervals,  his  favorite 
occupation  was  loafing  in  the  woods  in  the  suburbs  of  Portland 
and  inducing  young  children  to  go  to  his  camp.  He  was  gen- 
erally regarded  as  a  thief  and  people  were  afraid  of  him  as  his 
actions  were  peculiar.  Ramsey  w^as  picked  up  on  June  18,  ten 
days  after  the  murder,  as  he  was  crossing  the  Willamette  River 
on  a  raft.  It  was  well  known  to  the  authorities  that  he  had  been 
living  in  the  strip  of  hea\'y  timber  between  the  home  of  the  Hill 
family  and  the  Southern  Pacific  Railroad.  Upon  his  arrest  he 
said  that  he  was  a  San  Francisco  earthquake  refugee  and  that 
his  memory  was  poor  and  that  he  could  not  tell  where  he  was 
the  night  of  the  murder  of  the  Hills. 

When  Ramsey  was  picked  up,  ten  days  after  the  murder, 
he  was  barefoot  and  unkempt  and  had  injured  one  leg  by  burn- 
ing it,  so  he  claimed. 

On  June  19,  1911,  an  insanity  complaint  was  filed  against 
Ramsey  and  he  w^as  committed  to  the  asylum  at  Salem.  Com- 
mitment says  he  was  morose  and  had  hallucinations  and  illu- 
sions of  sight.  His  description  says  he  was  5  feet  7  inches  tall, 
weighed  145  pounds,  had  blue  eyes  and  gray  hair  and  was  some- 


Mind  and  the  Law,'  says:  "As  a  psychopathological  man- 
ifestation Sadism  is  dependent  pre-eminently,  at  any  rate 
in  its  most  pronounced  form,  upon  congenital  or  acquired 
feeble  mindedness,  upon  alcoholism,  hysteria,  epileptic 
psychoses  or  senile  dementia." 


98  Why  Some  Men  Kill 

what  bald.    He  gave  his  age  as  55  years  and  said  he  was  born 
in  Canada, 

The  State  Hospital  notes  say  of  Ramsey  that  he  "does  not 
appear  to  be  insane,  no  delusions  or  hallucinations  discoverable, 
is  coherent,  reasons  sanely  and  appears  normal,  works  well  and 
is  a  quiet,  nice  patient."  On  this  hospital  record  Ramsey  was 
discharged  on  July  25,  1911,  about  a  month  after  he  was  com- 
mitted. 

Ramsey  has  continued  to  live  on  the  outskirts  of  Portland 
with  occasional  visits  elsewhere. 

1  have  talked  with  a  number  of  boys,  at  least  half  a  dozen 
whom  Ramsey  has  mistreated  sexually,  and  several  of  them 
signed  sworn  statements  as  to  details.  These  statements  I  turned 
over  to  the  district  attorney  of  Clackamas  County  in  the  fall  of 
1915  when  Ramsey  was  arrested  on  a  vagrancy  complaint  signed 
by  L.  G.  McKenny,  who  first  brought  the  matter  of  Ramsey's 
assaults  on  children  to  my  attention  and  also  the  further  fact 
that  Ramsey  was  living  in  the  neighborhood  of  the  Hills  at  the 
time  of  the  murder.  Ramsey's  reputation  in  the  matter  of  his 
mistreatment  of  children  was  notorious  and  also  his  habits  as 
a  jungle  man  and  suspected  thief. 

Deputy  Sheriff  August  Scholtz,  of  Multnomah  County,  gave 
me*  his  sworn  statement  about  his  knowledge  of  Ramsey's  bad 
habits  where  children  were  concerned,  and  of  his  various  at- 
tempts to  get  evidence  to  convict  Ramsey  as  a  thief. 

Mr.  L.  G.  McKenny  suspected  Ramsey  of  being  implicated 
in  the  murder  of  the  Hill  family  because  of  his  presence  in  the 
community  and  because  of  his  peculiar  and  vicious  sexual  as- 
saults on  small  boys,  which  corresponded  with  the  assaults  made 
on  the  bodies  of  Mrs.  Hill  and  her  little  daughter  the  night  of 
the  murder. 

This  attracted  my  interest  and  attention  because  of  the  well- 
recognized  connection  between  sexual  assaults  on  children  and 
the  perversion  known  as  Sadism.  The  murder  of  the  Hills  was 
one  of  the  most  clearly  demonstrated  cases  of  sadistic  murder 
ever  recorded.  Dr.  Albert  Moll,  the  great  Euorpean  authority, 
in  his  book,  "The  Sexual  Life  of  the  Child,"  says  on  page  234, 
"Sexual  inclinations  towards  children  are  especially  apt  to  be 
associated  with  sadistic  acts." 

Conclusive  evidence  of  Ramsey's  presence  in  the  neighbor- 
hood of  the  Hill  home  on  the  evening  of  the  murder  was  dis- 
covered by  L.   G.  McKenny,  the   detective  whom  I  have  men- 


The  Hill  Murder  99 

tioned.  A  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Tliomas  1^.  Vale,  a  reputable  couple 
who  lived  at  Berkely,  a  short  distance  from  Ardenwald  station, 
took  a  walk  after  supper  on  the  evening  of  June  8,  the  night 
of  the  murder,  in  the  general  direction  of  Ardenwald,  and  they 
met  a  jungle  man  with  his  gunny  sack  and  tomato  can  who  was 
muttering  threats  against  some  woman  or  girl.  Here  is  Mrs. 
Vale's  statement: 

"State  of  Oregon,  County  of  Yamhill — ss. 

I,  Nancy  Vale,  being  first  duly  sworn,  depose  and  say  that  I 
am  the  wife  of  Thomas  B.  Vale,  and  that  at  present  I  am  a 
resident  of  McMinnville,  Yamhill  County,  Oregon,  and  that  in 
June  of  1911,  I  was  living  with  my  husband  in  Berkely,  Mult- 
nomah County,  Oregon;  that  on  the  evening  of  the  murder  of 
the  Hill  family  in  Ardenwald,  immediately  after  supper,  I  walked 
with  my  husband  towards  the  picnic  grounds  on  Johnson  Creek 
at  some  time  between  G  and  7  o'clock  P.  M.,  and  that  before 
we  reached  the  creek  we  met  and  passed  a  crazy  looking  man 
carrying  a  small  paper  sack  and  a  tomato  can.  He  was  horribly 
dirty  and  tough  looking  and  was  hanging  his  head  forward  and 
muttering  to  himself  as  he  passed  on.  After  he  had  got  by  us 
I  heard  him  say,  'Damn  her,  I'll  her  yet."  I  told  my  hus- 
band what  the  man  said  and  I  felt  so  horrified  at  his  appear- 
ance and  his  threat  against  some  woman  that  I  said  I  wanted 
to  go  back  home  and  we  did  go  home.  This  man  was  about  50 
years  old  and  medium  height  and  fairly  heavy  set  and  looked 
as  if  he  had  not  been  shaved  for  a  month.  I  think  I  should 
know  this  man,  though  it  is  four  years  since  this  happened, 
because  he  made  such  a  strong  impression  upon  me  because  of 
his  filthy  and  wild  appearance  and  his  threat  against  some 
woman,  unless  of  course  he  has  changed  very  much  in  appear- 
ance.                                                           (Signed)    Nancy  Vale." 

Mr.  Vale's  statement  corresponds  with  his  wife's.  Mr.  Vale 
was  so  much  impressed  by  this  occurrence  when  he  learned  tlie 
next  morning  that  the  Hills  had  been  murdered  and  Mrs.  Hill 
and  her  little  daughter  assaulted  that  he  reported  it  to  a  police 
officer,  but  probably  it  never  got  any  farther  than  the  officer 
whom  Mr.  Vale  talked  to. 

It  seems  that  on  the  afternoon  before  her  death  Mrs.  Hill 
called  on  her  father  and  brother  in  their  office  in  Portland  and 
that  she  was  disturbed  and  excited  by  something  that  had  hap- 
pened.    Mr.  Tom  Cowing,  a  brother  of  Mrs.  Hill's,  will  testify 


100  Why  Some  Men  Kill 

that  this  is  true.  The  place  where  the  Vales  met  Ramsey  is  not 
far  from  the  road  Mrs.  Hill  went  and  came  on  the  afternoon 
of  her  trip  to  Portland,  and  it  is  possible,  though  not  certain, 
that  Ramsey  accosted  her  that  afternoon  or  evening. 

After  Ramsey  was  arrested  in  1915  on  a  vagrancy  charge, 
I  took  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Vale  to  the  Clackamas  jail  to  see  if  they 
could  identify  Ramsey.  They  both  identified  him  positively  as 
the  man  they  saw  near  Johnson  Creek  the  evening  of  the  Hill 
murder  and  who  uttered  threats  against  some  woman. 

These  facts  concerning  Ed  Ramsey,  including  his  presence 
in  the  neighborhood  of  the  Hill  home  the  evening  of  the  murder, 
and  his  character  in  the  matter  of  his  treatment  of  children, 
were  presented  to  the  grand  jury  of  Clackamas  County  in  the 
fall  of  1915,  but  were  evidently  regarded  as  absurd  by  the  dis- 
trict attorney  and  the  grand  jury. 

In  a  private  conversation  with  the  district  attorney  a  short 
time  before  the  grand  jury  met  he  assured  me  that  "there  would 
be  something  doing  if  I  were  trying  to  railroad  a  harmless  old 
man  to  the  penitentiary."  He  said  that  he  knew  where  I  had 
been,  and  named  the  office  of  the  lawyer  who  was  attorney  for 
the  man  suspected  of  this  murder,  the  intimation  being  that  1 
had  been  hired  to  divert  suspicion  from  this  man  to  a  poor, 
harmless  half-wit. 

The  district  attorney  had  previously  hired  a  private  detective 
for  the  sum  of  $2000  to  get  the  evidence  in  this  murder  case, 
and  this  same  summer  this  detective  had  collected  his  $2000  by 
a  suit  in  court,  as  the  county  had  refused  to  pay  the  amount 
because  no  conclusive  evidence  had  been  secured.  The  detective 
believed  that  this  neighbor  of  Hills  who  had  been  arrested,  but 
whom  the  grand  jury  refused  to  indict,  was  the  guilty  man. 

The  district  attorney  intimated  that  the  boys  who  had  made 
detailed  statements  under  oath  of  Ramsey's  assaulting  them 
sexually  were  irresponsible,  and  asked  if  one  of  them  had  not 
been  in  the  reform  school. 

Ed  Ramsey  was  released  after  this  grand  jury  hearing  and 
the  matter  seemed  closed. 


William  Ru.ciiN  ( Iroiit  view),  who,  ;it 
the  time  he  confessed  to  the  murder  of 
William  Booth  on  October  8,  1915,  also 
confessed  to  his  part  in  the  sadistic  mur- 
der of  the  Hill  family  on  June  8,  1911. 
and  who  said  that  Charles  Brown  and 
William    Flynn    were   his   accomplices. 


Chapter  XV 

WILLIAM  RIGGIN'S   CONFESSION 

In  May  of  1917,  when  Bill  Riggin  confessed  to  shooting  and 
killing  William  Booth  at  Willamina  on  October  8,  1915,  he  made 
a  statement  about  taking  part  in  the  Hill  murder  on  June  8, 
1911.    The  statement  follows: 

Office  of  Sheriff  of  Washington 

J.  C.  Applegate 

Hillsboro,  Ore. 

State  of  Oregon,  County  of  Washington — ss. 

Under  oath,  I,  William  Riggin,  do  make  this  my  free  and  vol- 
untary statement,  to-wit: 

In  1911  I  was  standing  on  the  street,  right  by  the  bridge  at 
Oregon  City,  when  this  Mexican  named  Brown  and  William 
Flynn  came  up  to  me  and  said :  "Will,  we  know  where  we  can 
get  some  money."  I  said,  "All  right,  we'll  go  get  it."  This  was 
about  half-past-four  in  the  afternoon  when  they  came  to  me. 
Brown  gave  me  a  .38  automatic  revolver.  We  went  across  the 
Willamette  River,  across  the  bridge,  and  set  down  near  where 
an  old  store  stood,  and  talked.  We  talked  there,  I  guess  for 
about  twenty  minutes.  Brown  said,  "You  stay  out.  Bill,  and  be 
a  spotter  in  case  anything  turns  up,  and  give  a  signal  by  firing 
a  shot,  and  we'll  do  the  rest."  Brown  said:  "After  we  go  in 
and  come  out  again,  you  beat  it,  and  we  will  meet  again  tomor- 
row night."  The  meeting  place  was  to  be  down  below  the  Glad- 
stone Park.  We  then  walked  over  to  where  the  Hill  family 
lived  and  got  there  about  half-past-nine  at  night.  The  lights 
were  still  burning  in  the  house.  They  had  not  gone  to  bed.  The 
front  door  of  the  house  stood  out.  They  went  to  bed  at  about 
half-past-nine.  Brown  told  me  to  get  back  quite  a  ways  so  that 
I  could  see  good,  and  if  anyone  came,  to  fire  the  shot.  I  went 
back  from  the  house,  and  stayed  about  forty  yards  from  the 
house.  I  was  to  shoot  with  a  gun  down  close  to  the  ground, 
so  that  it  would  not  pop  loud.  They  waited  until  about  11  o'clock 
before  they  went  into  the  house.  Then  one  went  in  through  the 
window,  and  the  other  one  went  in  through  the  door.  Brown 
took  the  axe  from  the  woodshed.  Flynn  went  in  the  window 
and  Brown  went  in  the  door.  They  were  in  the  house  for  about 
half-hour.     I  heard  the  children  scream.     I  heard  a  noise  that 


102  Why  Some  Men  Kill 

sounded  like  chopping,  and  heard  the  screams.  They  came  out 
through  the  back  door,  and  went  one  way,  and  I  went  the  other. 
I  went  down  to  Gladstone  Park  and  laid  around  until  they  came. 
They  came  in  about  daylight.  They  had  $1400,  part  in  gold  and 
part  in  silver.  I  don't  remember  whether  there  was  any  paper 
money  or  not.  I  got  $100.00  for  my  part.  They  divided  the 
money.  They  went  one  way  and  I  went  the  other.  I  haven't 
seen  them  since. 

(Signed)  William  Riggin. 

State  of  Oregon,  County  of  Washington — ss. 

I,  William  Riggin,  being  first  duly  sworn,  depose  and  say  that 
the  foregoing  statement  is  true,  as  I  verily  believe,  so  help  me 
God. 

(Signed)  William  Riggin. 

Subscribed  and  sworn  to  before  me  this  18th  day  of  May, 
1917. 

(Signed)   H.  A.  Kurath, 
County  Clerk,  Washington  County,  Oregon. 

Late  in  July,  1917,  I  saw  William  Riggin  at  Willamina,  where 
he  located  the  spot  where  Rooth's  body  was  found  and  described 
the  position  of  the  body  with  absolute  accuracy,  according  to 
Mr.  Sherwin,  foreman  of  the  coroner's  jury. 

In  conversation  with  Riggin,  I  referred  to  Ed  Ramsey  with- 
out mentioning  the  Hill  murder.  Riggin  was  surprised  that  I 
knew  anything  of  Ramsey,  and  when  I  told  him  some  of  Ram- 
sey's peculiarities,  he  was  evidently  very  much  surprised  that 
I  should  know  anything  about  him. 

At  this  time  I  had  not  seen  Riggin's  statement  about  the  Hill 
murder  but  had  heard  of  it.  Riggin  exclaimed  with  an  oath 
that  he  might  as  well  tell  the  whole  story  of  the  murder  of  the 
Hills  and  the  next  day  he  gave  a  statement  which  follows: 

State  of  Oregon,  County  of  Marion — ss. 

I,  William  Riggin,  first  being  duly  sworn,  depose  and  say  in 
regard  to  the  Hill  murder,  that  I  had  been  living  around  with 
Ed  Ramsey  about  six  or  eight  months  before  the  Hill  family 
was  killed.  I  had  been  at  work  for  the  Fitzgerald  Brothers  at 
the  Blue  Ridge  farm  and  Ramsey  came  there  and  saw  me.  I 
had  seen  him  several  times  before  this,  but  it  was  after  I  left 
the  farm  that  I  lived  with  him  in  different  places  in  the  woods 
and  around  the  country  to  the  south  of  Portland  and  in  Yamhill 
County.     On  the  afternoon  before  the  murder  I  was  in  Oregon 


The  Hill  Murder  103 

City  and  sal  on  the  bridge  for  about  an  hour,  and  1  went  to  Mil- 
waukie  in  a  rig  that  evening. 

lianisey  and  1  made  a  plan  about  9  o'clock  to  go  to  the  Hill 
house.  I  met  Ramsey  down  close  to  Ardenwald.  I  went  and 
got  an  axe  from  a  fellow's  house  on  the  road  to  Ardenwald.  I 
think  1  could  go  and  pick  out  the  place.  I  know  that  I  went  up 
some  steps  to  get  the  axe,  but  I  don't  remember  how  many 
steps  there  were.  It  was  a  sharp  axe.  We  went  together  to 
the  house  about  midnight.  I  saw  Ramsey  go  in.  I  was  on  the 
lookout  on  the  outside  and  had  my  orders  to  shoot  close  to  the 
ground  if  anything  happened.  I  never  seen  her.  I  didn't  go 
into  the  house.  I  do  not  remember  what  time  Ramsey  came 
out  but  think  it  was  about  3:30  A.  M.  No,  I  was  not  in  there 
with  him.  That  is  one  reason  I  didn't  hang  around  Oregon  City 
afterwards.  I  saw  him  afterwards.  He  said:  "I  got  the  best  of 
the  people."  He  didn't  tell  me  what  he  did  to  the  woman  or 
the  little  girl.  He  gave  me  i}>100.00.  I  do  not  know  where  he 
got  the  money.  His  plans  were  to  get  money — and  hate.  I  know 
of  many  things  Ed  did  but  the  police  were  not  smooth  enough 
to  get  him.  After  this  was  over  that  night  we  went  down  by 
Gladstone  Park  and  stayed  around  the  shack  in  Scott's  Woods. 
The  next  morning  Ramsey  told  me  about  his  meeting  Mrs.  Hill 
on  the  road  to  Ardenwald  the  afternoon  before,  and  about  his 
asking  her  for  and  about  her  running  away  from  him. 

After  this  affair  I  lived  with  Ramsey  off  and  on  for  several 
years,  though  I  did  not  see  him  for  some  time  after  the  killing 
of  the  Hill  family.  My  father  asked  me  several  times  who  this 
strange  man  was  that  I  was  monkeying  around  with  and  wanted 
me  to  leave  him. 

I  thought  about  the  Hill  family  a  good  deal  and  it  troubled 
me  so  that  I  did  not  go  to  that  neighborhood.  My  brother  John 
asked  me  at  one  time  what  it  was  that  troubled  me,  and  at 
another  time  my  father  wanted  to  know  what  it  was  that  made 
me  so  troubled.  I  told  him  it  wasn't  worth  while  for  him  to 
know  everything.  In  May  of  this  year  when  I  was  at  Hillsboro 
I  told  my  father  for  the  first  time  about  my  connection  with 
the  Hill  matter. 

(Signed)    Wuxiam  Riggin. 

Subscribed  and  sworn  to  before  me  this  21st  day  of  July,  1917. 

(Signed)  Frank  Davey, 

Notary  Public  for  Oregon. 

The  discrepancies  in  the  two  statements  are  very  interesting, 


104  Why  Some  Men  Kill 

especially  as  they  are  the  wholly  voluntary  statements  of  a  high- 
grade  defective,  no  attempt  being  made  to  lead  him. 

In  the  confession  of  May,  1917,  Riggin  told  of  two  men,  Brown 
and  Flynn,  proposing  to  rob  the  Hill  family  and  of  their  asking 
him  to  be  outside  guard.  The  men  met  in  Oregon  City,  and 
Riggin  said  they  walked  to  the  site  of  the  Hill  home  and  got 
there  about  9:30  P.  M.  In  Riggin's  statement  in  July,  1917,  he 
said  he  rode  from  Oregon  City  in  a  rig.  In  his  statement  to 
Attorney  General  Brown  in  August,  1918,  Riggin  said  the  other 
men  had  a  team  and  he  had  a  saddle  horse. 

In  the  May,  1917,  statement  Riggin  said  the  front  door  of  the 
Hill  cabin  "stood  out."  It  was  typed  "open"  and  changed  after- 
wards. It  is  fair  to  assume  that  he  meant  that  the  door  would 
not  open,  judging  from  the  change  of  wording  and  his  statement 
in  August  and  later  that  they  went  in  at  the  back  door.  It  is 
true  that  the  front  door  was  fastened  shut  and  could  not  be 
opened  and  that  the  murderers  did  use  the  back  door. 

In  his  first  statement  Riggin  said  Brown  took  the  axe  from 
the  woodshed.  In  his  second  statement  Riggin  said  he  got  the 
axe  himself  and  thought  he  could  take  me  to  the  house  where 
he  got  it.  He  did  this  a  year  later  and  showed  where  the  axe 
was  taken,  and  curiously,  in  view  of  the  previous  account,  he 
was  entirely  accurate  in  showing  where  the  axe  was  secured, 
and  during  this  year  he  was  in  the  penitentiary  and  without  any 
opportunity  of  getting  the  information. 

In  his  first  statement  Riggin  said  Brown  and  Flynn  were 
his  accomplices  in  the  murder.  At  the  time  I  first  talked  to 
Riggin  in  July,  1917,  I  had  not  seen  his  confession  of  May,  1917, 
and  did  not  know  the  names.  I  asked  some  questions  about 
Ramsey  and  he  was  very  much  surprised  that  I  knew  him,  and 
he  finally  admitted  that  he  knew  Ramsey  and  was  living  with 
him  in  the  early  summer  of  1911,  and  said  that  his  father  and 
brothers  knew  who  Ramsey  was.  In  telling  me  the  story  of 
the  murder  he  placed  all  the  blame  on  Ramsey  and  did  not 
mention  Brown.  In  August,  1918,  Riggin  told  Attorney  General 
Brown,  Warden  Murphy,  the  stenographer  and  I  being  present, 
that  Ramsey  sometimes  went  by  the  name  of  William  Flynn. 
He  also  said  that  Brown  was  the  name  that  Charlie  Daniels  went 
by  and  that  Daniels  was  an  old  friend  of  his  and  that  they  were 
in  the  reform  school  together.  He  said  he  kept  Daniels  out  of 
it  as  much  as  he  could  because  of  their  friendship.  Upon  making 
inquiries  I  found  that  Charlie  Daniels  was  in  the  reform  school 


The  Hill  Murder  105 

froir.  the  time  he  was  11  years  old  until  he  was  21  and  that 
Riggin  was  in  the  reform  school  several  years  during  this  period. 
Riggin's  father  and  two  brothers  knew  of  the  friendship  between 
Riggin  and  Daniels.  Daniels  had  a  very  bad  record  in  the 
reform  school  and  the  school  records  showed  that  his  mentality 
was  poor  and  his  habits  depraved.  One  of  Riggin's  brothers  said 
that  Daniels,  alias  Brown,  hkc  Ramsey,  was  known  as  a  "kid" 
man,  or  one  with  a  sexual  preference  for  children. 

After  Riggin's  statement  to  me  in  July,  1917,  I  asked  him 
where  Ramsey  was  and  he  told  me  that  some  weeks  previous 
he  saw  Ramsey  in  Tillamook  when  Warden  Murphy  took  him 
to  find  the  revolver  he  said  he  killed  Booth  with,  and  that  Ram- 
sey came  to  the  restaurant  where  they  were  eating  supper  and 
attempted  to  talk  to  him.  Warden  Murphy  told  me  that  a  man 
did  come  into  the  restaurant  and  attempt  to  talk  to  Riggin  but 
that  he  sent  him  away.  Later  Riggin  said  that  this  was  Daniels 
and  not  Ramsey. 

In  August  of  1918  Ramsey  was  arrested  on  the  charge  of 
vagrancy  and  was  sentenced  to  three  months  in  the  county 
jail.  I  took  Riggin's  father  and  brother  on  one  occasion,  and 
another  brother  later  to  the  jail,  and  all  three  unhesitatingly 
picked  Ramsey  out  of  a  group  of  prisoners  as  William  Riggin's 
friend  and  associate  at  the  time  the  Hill  murder  w-as  committed. 
They  were  absolutely'  positive  in  their  identification  of  Ramsey, 
and  two  of  them  had  given  me  a  fairly  good  description  of 
Ramsey  the  year  before,  so  this  question  w^as  settled  that  Ram- 
sey (by  whatever  name)  and  Riggin  were  living  in  the  jungle 
as  hoboes  at  the  time  the  Hill  murder  was  committed. 

A  few  days  before  this  I  arranged  with  Governor  Withycombe 
to  have  Warden  Murphy  bring  Riggin  to  the  Multnomah  county 
jail  in  order  that  he  and  Ramsey  might  be  questioned  about  the 
Hill  murder.  Attorney  General  Brown  and  First  Assistant  Dis- 
trict Attorney  John  Collier  of  Multnomah  County  were  present. 
Riggin  told  the  story  of  the  murder  substantially  as  he  had  told 
it  before,  but  when  Ramsey  was  brought  into  the  room  he  said, 
"This  was  not  Ramsey";  that  Ramsey  was  a  tall  man  wdth  black 
hair.  Ramsey  denied  ever  having  seen  Riggin,  but  he  added  his 
comment  about  the  tall  man  who  was  in  the  vicinity  of  the  Hill 
home  at  the  time  of  the  murder.  Ramsey  said  there  was  such 
a  man  in  the  neighborhood  of  the  Hills  at  the  time  of  the  mur- 
der and  that  he  ought  to  be  looked  up.  Riggin  was  much  dis- 
turbed at  Ramsey's  presence  and  trembled  so  noticeably  as  to 


106  Why  Some  Men  Kill 

attract  attention.  John  Riggin,  Bill's  brother,  said  that  Bill  told 
him  Ramsey  had  threatened  to  kill  him  if  he  did  not  do  as  he 
said. 

On  this  same  day  Attorney  General  Brown,  Mr,  Collier,  Wil- 
liam Riggin  and  I  went  to  the  neighborhood  of  the  murder  and 
Riggin  gave  directions  as  to  stopping  at  the  different  points. 
Near  Ardenwald  station  Riggin  pointed  out  the  spot  where  he 
and  Ramsey  met.  Then  he  showed  us  just  where  he  got  the  axe 
from  a  neighbor's  house.  This  was  accurate.  Then  he  showed 
the  former  site  of  the  Hill  home  and  was  entirely  accurate  in 
this,  though  the  house  was  torn  down  within  a  year  or  two  of 
the  murder  and  no  sign  remains  of  its  location.  There  is  now 
a  plowed  field  where  the  house  stood.  Riggin  described  vividly 
what  happened  the  night  of  the  murder  and  pointed  out  where 
he  and  Ramsey  crossed  the  road  afterwards  and  followed  a 
cow  trail  back  to  near  the  spot  where  he  got  the  axe,  and  where 
their  team  was  hitched.  A  number  of  days  after  the  murder 
bloodhounds  followed  a  trail  from  the  Hill  house  along  this  cow 
path  and  lost  it  at  the  spot  where  a  bloody  cloth  was  found. 
This  was  about  where  Riggin  said  the  team  was  standing. 

Then  Riggin  directed  us  to  where  he  and  Ramsey  had  a  camp 
and  where  he  said  Ramsey  buried  his  trousers,  which  were 
bloody. 

Within  a  couple  of  weeks  I  took  Riggin's  father  to  Salem, 
and  we  had  a  lengthy  interview  with  Riggin  in  Attorney  General 
Brown's  office.  Warden  Murphy,  William  Riggin,  Riggin's  fa- 
ther, the  Attorney  General  and  I  being  present.  Riggin  admitted 
to  his  father  and  then  to  all  of  us  that  he  recognized  Ramsey 
when  he  saw  him  in  Portland  but  was  afraid  of  him  and  so  said 
he  was  not  Ramsey,  He  also  admitted  that  Charlie  Daniels, 
alias  Brown,  was  with  them  on  the  night  of  the  murder,  and 
said  that  Daniels  had  been  a  good  friend  of  his  and  that  he 
did  not  like  to  tell  about  his  part  in  the  murder. 

Later  Riggin  saw  Ramsey  in  the  Multnomah  jail  and  said 
that  Ramsey  was  the  man.  Ramsey  denied  ever  having  seen 
Riggin  but  the  look  in  his  eyes  when  Riggin  came  into  the  room 
together  with  the  positive  identification  of  Ramsey  by  Riggin's 
father  and  Riggin's  two  brothers  was  conclusive  that  Ramsey 
and  Riggin  knew  each  other. 

At  this  time  Riggin  admitted  for  the  first  time  that  he  was 
inside  the  Hill  house  the  night  of  the  murder. 

Riggin  insisted  in  his  story  to  Attorney  General  Brown  that 
he  was  paid  -$100  for  watching  outside  and  the  motive  of  the 


The  Hill  Murder  107 

murder  was  robbery.  This  is  palpably  unlriie.  Kig^in  said  lie  had 
a  saddle  horse  and  that  the  Fitzgerald  laniily  at  IMue  Lake  farm 
would  corroborate  this.  1  learned  that  Higgin  worked  lor  the 
Fitzgeralds  at  intervals  lor  a  number  of  years  as  he  said  he 
did,  but  they  knew  nothing  of  his  saddle  horse.  Uiggin  told  the 
Attorney  General  that  it  was  a  light  night  when  the  murder  was 
committed.  This  is  true  as  there  was  a  brilliant  moon.  Biggin 
was  badly  confused  in  telling  of  the  time  the  men  spent  inside 
the  house,  but  in  common  with  defectives  generally  he  has  no 
idea  of  estimating  time.  He  shows  this  clearly,  and  his  father 
says  he  never  could  tell  about  the  passage  of  time. 

Riggin  told  of  his  association  with  Daniels  after  the  murder 
and  of  some  of  their  illegal  operations  together.  Daniels  had  a 
rendezvous  in  the  coast  mountains  and  Higgin  admitted  that 
Daniels  was  the  man  who  tried  to  talk  to  him  when  he  was  in 
Tillamook  with  Warden  Murphy.  This  confusing  Daniels  with 
Ramsey,  which  Riggin  said  he  did  to  protect  Daniels,  together 
with  the  aliases  of  the  two  men,  has  made  the  story  hard  to 
unravel.  However,  we  know  that  Riggin  and  Daniels  had  been 
friends  for  years,  and  Riggin  and  Ramsey  lived  together  in  the 
jungle  at  the  time  of  the  murder,  and  that  Riggin  has  described 
the  murder  and  given  details  which  are  true. 

Before  analyzing  the  confession  there  are  two  points  to  be 
remembered  and  held  in  mind  constantly: 

First,  it  makes  no  difference  whether  Riggin  is  weak-minded 
or  crazy  or  normal  if  his  story  is  corroborated  by  the  facts.  A 
fact  does  not  cease  to  be  a  fact,  if  corroborated,  because  a  crazy 
man  or  a  weak-minded  man  relates  it,  though  there  is  apt  to  be 
confusion  and  exaggerations  and  false  statements  about  details 
if  a  weak-minded  man  tells  a  story  of  crime. 

Second,  the  question  of  Riggin's  confession  being  an  inven- 
tion must  be  weighed  carefully.  If  it  was  invented,  was  it  in- 
vented six  and  seven  years  after  the  murder,  or  was  it  invented 
at  the  time  and  concealed  six  years  and  then  partially  told  and 
fully  told  a  year  later?  Could  it  have  been  invented  six  years 
after? 

ANALYSIS  01"  TlIK  CONFESSION 

In  William  Riggin's  confession  of  the  Hill  murder,  if  we 
eliminate  his  statements  which  are  obviously  untrue  and  then 
consider  the  facts  which  have  been  corroborated,  we  shall  be  in 
a  position  to  decide  whether  the  confession  is  an  invention  to 
obtain  notoriety,  or  whether  it  is  the  truth  as  to  the  central  facts 


108  Why  Some  Men  Kill 

but  colored  by  the  vanity  of  a  defective  man.  There  is  no  middle 
ground.  Either  Riggin  was  implicated  in  this  murder  or  the 
story  is  palpably  absurd.  Riggin  has  been  in  prison  since  Octo- 
ber, 1915,  and  since  he  confessed  he  has  stood  by  his  story, 
though  some  of  the  details  are  false.  Nobody  had  suspected  him 
of  the  crime  and  there  is  nobody  in  the  prison  who  would  derive 
any  advantage  from  Riggin  making  this  confession. 

Riggin  says  that  the  motive  for  this  murder  was  robbery. 
This  is  untrue  and  absurd  as  well.  The  treatment  of  the  bodies 
settles  that  as  well  as  the  known  poverty  of  the  Hills. 

Riggin  made  conflicting  statements  about  the  time  the  mur- 
derers were  in  the  house,  but  he  cannot  estimate  the  passage  of 
time.  Few  defectives  can,  and  some  normal  people  are  lacking 
in  that  capacity. 

Riggin  told  different  stories  about  walking,  riding  in  a  rig 
and  riding  horseback  to  the  scene  of  the  murder.  This  detail 
is  not  vital  either  way,  but  it  tends  to  discredit  him  generally. 
Riggin's  imagination  ran  away  with  him  here  as  a  defective's 
is  apt  to  do  in  giving  details. 

Riggin  placed  all  the  blame  on  Ramsey  when  he  found  that 
I  knew  Ramsey,  though  after  he  talked  with  his  father  he  cleared 
up  this  and  other  misstatements.  Riggin  told  Attorney  General 
Brown  in  August,  1918,  that  Ramsey  went  by  the  name  of  Flynn. 
In  Riggin's  confession  to  the  sheriff  of  Washington  County  in 
May  of  1917,  he  said  Flynn  was  one  of  the  murderers.  He  also 
said  Brown  was  one.  Later  it  developed  that  Brown  was  an 
alias  of  Charlie  Daniels,  a  reform  school  chum  of  Riggin's. 

Riggin  told  me  that  Ramsey  tried  to  talk  to  him  in  Tillamook 
when  he  was  there  with  Warden  Murphy.  Warden  Murphy 
said  that  some  man  tried  to  talk  to  Riggin  but  that  he  sent  him 
away.  Later  Riggin  admitted  that  this  man  was  Daniels,  alias 
Brown,  and  not  Ramsey.  Riggin  explained  that  he  was  trying 
to  protect  Daniels  as  Daniels  had  been  good  to  him. 

Riggin  when  he  first  met  Ramsey  in  Portland  in  August,  1918, 
denied  that  it  was  Ramsey,  but  the  meeting  was  absolutely  unex- 
pected to  Riggin  and  he  trembled  very  much  on  meeting  Ram- 
sey. However,  there  is  no  doubt  of  Ramsey's  identity.  That's 
absolutely  settled,  and  Riggin's  father  and  two  brothers  posi- 
tively identified  him  in  the  jail  as  the  man  Bill  Riggin  was 
living  with  in  1911.  Riggin  admitted  that  it  was  Ramsey  the 
next  time  he  saw  him,  so  while  Riggin  did  not  tell  the  truth  at 


The  Hill  Murder  109 

first,  he  admitted  it  later  and  explained  that  his  fear  of  Ramsey 
induced  him  to  deny  that  Ramsey  was  the  man. 

These  are  the  statements  in  the  confessions  which  tend  to 
discredit  Riggin's  story  of  the  murder. 

STATEMENTS  CORROBORATED 

Riggin  says  that  the  night  of  the  murder  was  a  light  night. 
This  is  true  as  there  was  a  brilliant  moon. 

Riggin  has  said  on  every  occasion  that  the  murderers  did  not 
go  in  at  the  front  door  of  the  Hill  house  but  went  in  at  the  back 
door.  This  is  true,  though  the  only  Portland  newspaper  which 
referred  in  any  way  to  the  doors  said  that  the  front  door  was 
found  open  the  next  morning.  This  is  untrue.  Riggin's  story 
is  correct  about  this  detail  and  it  was  impossible  that  he  should 
have  got  it  from  a  Portland  newspaper.  He  had  some  other 
source  of  information.  He  said  one  man  got  in  a  window,  but 
this  is  unreasonable. 

Riggin  showed  Attorney  General  Brown,  Mr.  Collier  and  me 
just  where  the  Hill  cabin  stood.  This  was  accurate  and  showed 
that  Riggin  had  personal  knowledge  of  where  the  Hill  cabin 
stood.  However,  it  is  absolutely  established  that  Ramsey  lived 
in  the  vicinity  and  that  Riggin  was  living  with  him  at  about  the 
time  of  the  murder.  Riggin  could  have  learned  of  the  location 
of  the  house  even  if  he  had  no  connection  with  the  murder. 

Riggin  showed  Attorney  General  Brown,  Mr.  Collier  and  me 
just  where  he  got  the  axe.  This  was  exactly  accurate.  At  the 
time  of  the  murder  there  were  five  different  newspaper  stories 
as  to  where  the  axe  was  and  only  one  of  the  five  was  accurate. 
If  Riggin  got  this  detail  from  the  newspapers  he  picked  the 
right  story  out  of  five  different  stories.  Then  too  he  showed 
us  the  spot  in  August,  1918.  The  murder  occurred  June  8,  1911, 
and  the  newspaper  stories  were  printed  in  three  days  following. 

R.  A.  Delk  said  at  the  inquest,  June  9,  1911,  that  the  axe  was 
"on  our  rear  step  porch — south  side." 

The  Portland  News  said  that  the  axe  was  left  leaning  against 
front  step  of  his  (Delk's)  home. 

The  Journal  of  June  9  said  the  axe  was  standing  in  front  of 
his  (Delk's)  house  and  that  probably  the  moon  shone  on  it  and 
attracted  the  murderer,  but  the  next  day  the  Journal  said  that 
"he  (the  murderer)  picked  the  axe  from  the  side  steps  of  J.  T. 
Delk's  house."     (This  is  correct.) 

The  Oregonian  said  that  the  axe  "leaned  against  a  side  porch." 


110  Why  Some  Men  Kill 

The  Telegram  said  that  the  axe  was  "taken  from  rear  of 
house." 

So  if  Riggin  learned  where  the  axe  was  from  the  papers, 
taking  pains  to  pick  the  right  story  out  of  five,  he  must  have 
remembered  it  most  tenaciously  for  over  seven  years  to  enable 
him  to  go  to  the  spot  and  put  his  hand  on  the  step  where  the 
axe  was  taken. 

Riggin  showed  where  the  murderers  went  after  the  murder. 
This  corresponded  to  the  trail  followed  by  the  bloodhounds  to 
the  point  where  the  bloody  rag  was  discovered.  The  story  of 
the  bloodhounds  was  printed  in  June,  1911.  Riggin  told  his 
story  on  the  ground  in  August,  1918. 

CAN  THE  CONFESSION   BE  AN  INVENTION? 

In  view  of  all  the  confusion  of  Riggin's  confession  and  his 
contradictions  and  his  obviously  untruthful  statement  of  the 
motive,  can  it  be  said  fairly  that  the  confession  is  an  invention 
of  a  weak-minded  man?  If  it  was  an  invention,  when  was  it 
invented?  Was  it  invented  in  1917  and  1918  or  was  it  invented 
in  June  of  1911?  Riggin  had  been  in  prison  nearly  two  years 
when  he  told  the  story  of  this  murder  and  he  told  it  at  the  same 
time  he  told  of  the  murder  of  William  Rooth,  which  he  undoubt- 
edly committed. 

Ramsey  denies  all  knowledge  of  the  Hill  murder  but  he  ad- 
mits that  he  was  living  in  the  neighborhood  when  it  occurred. 

Ramsey  also  says  that  the  tall  man  described  by  Riggin  was 
in  the  neighborhood  at  the  time  of  the  murder  and  that  he 
should  be  looked  up.     Charlie  Daniels  is  a  tall  man. 

To  go  back  to  Riggin's  wholly  voluntary  and  surprising  con- 
fession to  Sheriff  Applegatc  of  Washington  County  in  May  of 
1917  we  find  that  Riggin  said  his  accomplices  in  the  Hill  murder 
were  Flynn  and  Rrown.  That  confession  was  received  with 
incredulity  and  ridicule,  but  a  year  and  a  half  later  Attorney 
General  Rrown,  whom  nobody  would  accuse  of  leading  a  wit- 
ness, brought  out  the  fact  that  Flynn  was  one  of  the  names  that 
Ed  Ramsey  went  by.  Ramsey  was  Riggin's  partner  or  com- 
panion at  the  time  of  the  murder,  as  we  know  from  independent 
testimony,  and  was  in  the  vicinity  of  the  Hill  house  the  night 
of  the  murder.  It  also  appeared  at  this  conference  in  Attorney 
General  Rrown's  office  in  1918  that  Rrown,  whom  Riggin  told 
Sheriff  Applegate  about  in  1917,  was  Charlie  Daniels,  also  known 
to  be  a  companion  of  Riggin  and  a  friend  of  his  in  the  reform 
school.     I  called  up  the  reform  school  by  telephone  from  Attor- 


The  Hill  Murder  111 

noy    (icncral    Brown's    oflicc    and    got    tlu'    record    of    Daniels' 
detention  and  the  story  of  liis  low  mentality  and  depraved  habits. 

So  we  have  a  clear  thread  of  facts  rinining  Ihrongh  the  con- 
fessions given  by  Higgin  in  his  apparently  contradictory  and 
confusing  statements.  This  was  secured  by  patiently  following 
Riggin's  story,  verifying  every  feature  and  asking  for  explana- 
tion of  the  discrepancies. 

Riggin's  father,  who  has  been  an  industrious  and  respectable 
citizen  of  Oregon  for  many  years,  was  especially  helpful  in  get- 
ting explanations  of  contradictions  and  misstatements  from  his 
son. 

Nothing  is  known  of  Daniels  in  connection  with  the  murder 
except  that  a  man  answering  his  description  was  in  the  vicinity 
at  the  time  and  it  is  known  that  Daniels  and  Riggin  were  old 
chums. 

Applying  the  sound  principle  that  Riggin's  confession  is  either 
palpably  absurd  or  else  that  Riggin  was  implicated  in  the  mur- 
der, it  seems  reasonable  to  believe  that  Riggin  was  guilty  as  he 
says  he  was.  If  he  was  guilty,  the  fact  that  he  was  living  with 
Ramsey  does  not  prove  that  Ramsey  was  guilty  too,  though 
Ramsey  is  a  weak-minded  man  but  shrewder  and  stronger  both 
mentally  and  physically  than  Riggin. 

However,  the  condition  of  the  bodies  of  the  murdered  family 
indicates  strongly  that  one  man  could  not  have  been  guilty  of 
the  sexual  atrocities  practiced.  Ramsey's  character  in  the  matter 
of  the  abuse  of  children  is  known  to  be  vicious,  and  Moll,  whom 
I  ha^ve  quoted,  points  out  the  sadistic  tendencies  of  men  of  this 
kind. 

However,  in  Oregon,  no  man  may  be  convicted  of  murder 
on  the  testimony  of  an  accomplice  unless  there  is  corroborative 
evidence.  Ramsey's  presence  near  the  scene  of  the  murder  early 
in  the  evening,  and  his  threats  against  some  woman  or  girl  as 
testified  to  by  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Thomas  Vale,  might  be  construed 
as  corroboration  in  view  of  Riggin's  confession,  especially  in 
view  of  Ramsey's  character  and  his  known  sexual  perversion. 
If  the  facts  could  have  been  presented  to  a  trial  jury  at  the  time 
of  the  murder,  there  is  little  doubt  but  that  such  a  jury  would 
have  convicted  both  Riggin  and  Ramsey  whatever  it  might  have 
done  about  Daniels.  Here  were  three  defective  men  and  one 
was  known  to  be  sexually  abnormal,  and  another  one  confessed, 
and  thej-^  were  at  the  scene  of  the  murder  or  near  by. 

However,  at  a   distance  of  over  seven  years  there   is  little 


112  Why  Some  Men  Kill 

interest  in  any  murder  so  far  as  securing  a  conviction  goes.  And 
yet  as  a  study  of  the  criminal  capacities  of  weak-minded  and 
abnormal  men  this  account  of  the  Hill  murder  is  a  contribution 
of  considerable  value  to  the  subject.  The  time  has  passed  when 
any  innocent  man  could  be  convicted  of  this  murder  on  so-called 
circumstantial  evidence,  but  suspicions  and  doubts  must  remain 
while  the  theory  of  the  detective  is  not  shown  to  be  unreasonable 
and  improbable. 


Chapter  XVI 

THE  MURDER  OF  MARY  SPINA 

In  August  of  1918  Giovanni  Monaco,  aged  32  years,  shot  and 
killed  Mary  Spina,  aged  17  years,  in  her  father's  home  in  Port- 
land, Ore.,  because  she  would  not  marry  him.  He  went  to  the 
room  of  the  girl  he  loved,  at  night,  and  shot  her  seven  times 
with  an  automatic  revolver.  He  said  on  the  stand  that  the 
reason  he  did  not  shoot  her  more  times  was  because  while  he 
kept  pulhng  the  trigger  there  were  no  more  shots  in  the  revolver. 
The  girl  was  asleep  when  he  entered  the  room.  She  had  refused 
to  marry  Monaco,  and  so  he  killed  his  love  because  he  loved 
her  so.  Poor  Mary  Spina's  body  was  riddled  with  bullets  as 
she  lay  asleep  in  her  father's  house,  and  then  Monaco  started 
for  Canada.  He  was  brought  back  and  tried  for  murder  in 
October,  1918.  With  all  the  naivete  of  a  child  he  testified  on 
the  stand  that  he  was  insane  when  he  killed  his  love,  and  he 
gave  as  the  chief  symptom  of  his  mental  disease  the  fact  that 
he  had  cried  every  day  for  months  because  his  love  for  this 
girl  whom  he  wanted  to  marry.  When  asked  by  the  district 
attorney  what  made  him  crazy  he  replied,  "Love."  This  com- 
pletes the  circle  and  incidentally  illustrates  the  type  of  mind 
possessed  by  Monaco. 

Monaco's  attorney  bolstered  up  the  defense  of  insanity  by 
evidence  tending  to  show  that  crazy  people  always  know  when 
they  are  crazy,  which  will  doubtless  be  of  interest  to  alienists. 
He  also  brought  out  the  statement  from  Monaco  that  he  forgot 
about  killing  Mary  Spina  until  he  saw  the  fact  mentioned  in  a 
newspaper.    On  cross-examination  by  the  district  attorney  Mon- 


I 


Giovanni  Monac.a.  a  high-j^radc  inoinii,  who  kilh'd  M:ii\  Sjiiiia,  ujivd  17  ycais.  in 
Allfilist.  1!I1S,  because  slie  would  not  niariv  him.  Moiiaca  has  {^oiie  to  the  peiiiteiitiarx 
lor    life. 


The  Spin  a  Murder  1 1 3 

aco  said  in  answer  to  a  question  as  to  why  he  did  not  talk  about 
killing  Mary  Spina  while  he  was  on  his  way  to  Canada  imme- 
diately after  the  killing,  that  he  had  forgotten  all  about  it.  Then 
he  was  asked  by  the  district  attorney  what  he  thought  when  he 
saw  the  account  of  the  murder  in  the  papers.  His  response, 
accompanied  by  an  eloquent  shrug,  was  that  it  was  in  the  papers 
and  so  it  was  of  no  use  to  deny  it. 

All  this  story  demonstrates  is  the  childish  lack  of  ability  to 
reason  about  the  effect  of  this  silly  story  on  the  court  and  the 
jury. 

The  murder  was  a  peculiarly  cold-blooded  and  brutal  one 
and  the  explanation  is  so  silly — if  it  was  intended  seriously — 
that  it  raises  a  question  about  Monaco's  mental  condition. 

I  had  a  long  talk  with  Monaco  just  after  he  was  brought  back 
from  Canada  and  finally  I  asked  him  why  he  did  not  kill  him- 
self too.  He  said,  "I  did  think  about  jumping  off  Broadway 
bridge  that  night."  This  is  like  Tronson's  statement  in  his  con- 
fession of  murdering  the  girl  who  would  not  marry  him  in  South 
Portland  in  1914.  Tronson  got  as  far  as  Castle  Rock,  Wash., 
immediately  after  the  murder  of  his  loved  one,  but  said  he  was 
planning  to  come  back  and  kill  himself. 

Monaco  shot  his  love  seven  times  and  snapped  the  revolver 
alter  that.  His  story  and  his  cross-examination  showed  beyond 
any  possibility  of  doubt  that  he  is  weak-minded  or  in  other 
words  that  he  is  a  child  in  mind.  He  was  denied  what  he  wanted 
and  so  he  killed. 

The  members  of  the  trial  jury  eyed  Monaco  in  intent  and 
puzzled  curiosity,  for  he  showed  no  signs  of  distress  aside  from 
being  rather  pale,  and  he  was  apparently  perfectly  sincere  in 
his  defense  and  told  his  story  as  though  he  were  a  disinterested 
witness.  The  jury  did  not  know  that  Monaco  was  a  moron,  or 
high-grade  feeble-mind,  and  consequently  an  irresponsible  per- 
son. The  ^ury  convicted  Monaco  of  murder  and  he  was  sen- 
tenced to  life  imprisonment  in  the  penitentiary. 

In  his  statement  to  the  district  attorney  Monaco  answered  all 
questions  readily.  Q.  Her  father  wouldn't  let  her  go  with  you? 
A.  Yes.  Q.  When  was  that?  A.  That  was  last  June.  Q,  June  of 
this  year?  A.  No,  June  of  last  year.  Q.  After  that  did  you 
stay  here  in  Portland?  A.  No;  not  when  I  was  going  to  jail  the 
first  time.  Q.  How  long  were  you  in  jail?  A.  Nineteen  hours. 
Q.  Then  where  did  you  go?  A.  I  go  in  British  Columbia.  Q,  You 
go  in  British  Columbia?    A.  Yes,  for  six  months.     Q.  You  were 


114  Why  Some  Men  Kill 

in  jail  for  threatening  to  kill  her,  weren't  you?  You  said  you 
were  going  to  kill  her,  or  something  like  that?  A.  No,  she  had 
a  letter  from  me.  I  wrote  her  a  letter  to  go  away,  she  with  me. 
Q.  As  I  understand  it,  you  have  been  ordered  out  of  town  twice 
for  threatening  to  kill  this  girl?  A.  Yes.  Q.  That  is  right,  is  it? 
A.  Yes.  Q.  When  did  you  come  back  to  Portland  the  last  time 
after  you  were  ordered  out?  When  did  you  come  back?  A.  The 
3rd  of  this  month;  August.  Q.  What  did  you  come  back  for? 
A.  I  was  crazy.  Q.  Did  you  kill  this  girl?  A.  Yes.  Q.  Where 
did  you  get  the  gun?  A.  I  get  the  gun  in  Seattle.  Q.  What  kind 
of  a  gun  was  it?  A.  A  little  pistol.  Q.  An  automatic?  Inspector 
Morak:  Do  you  want  to  show  it  to  him?  Mr.  Collier:  Yes. 
(Inspector  Morak  produces  gun).  Q,  Examine  the  gun  I  hand 
you  and  state  if  that  is  the  gun  you  used.  (Hands  gun  to  pris- 
oner.) A.  I  guess  it  is,  yes.  Yes.  (The  gun  so  handed  to  pris- 
oner is  identified  as  a  ,25  Colt's  automatic.  No.  168199).  Q.  Is 
that  the  gun  you  got  in  Seattle?  A.  Yes.  Q.  When  did  you  get 
the  gun?  A.  When  I  was  going  to  Vancouver  last  year.  Q.  When 
they  sent  you  to  jail  in  the  month  of  May,  you  made  up  your 
mind  if  you  got  out  you  would  kill  her?  A.  Yes.  If  she  married 
me,  all  right.  If  she  didn't,  I  going  to  kill  her.  Q.  And  you 
made  up  your  mind  to  do  that  last  May?  A.  Yes.  Q.  That  was 
why  you  came  back?  A.  Yes,  that  is  all,  for  that  cause,  I  was 
crazy,  I  never  can  get  in  the  city  and  all  the  time  will  be  cry- 
ing and  sore  of  that  thing.  Q.  So  you  didn't  have  any  other 
business  in  Portland,  but  came  back  here  for  the  express  pur- 
pose of  killing  her?  A.  Yes,  that  is  all.  Just  for  this  deed.  That 
is  true.  I  don't  care  if  they  send  me  to  jail  all  my  life.  I  want 
to  tell  the  truth.  Q.  You  knew  it  was  wrong  to  kill  her,  didn't 
you?  A.  She  done  me  wrong  and  sent  me  to  jail  twice.  Q.  You 
knew  it  was  wrong  to  take  life,  didn't  you?  (Talks  in  Italian  to 
Morak.)  Inspector  Morak:  I  didn't  have  no  more  brains  then. 
Q.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  you  know  you  shot  her  while  she  was 
asleep.  She  didn't  wake  up  at  all  when  you  shot  her?  A.  No, 
she  was  waked  up  a  little  bit.  Q.  Did  she  say  anything  to  you? 
A.  No.  Q.  Did  she  say  anything  to  anybody?  A,  Just  "Oh,  Ma." 
Q.  Started  to  call  for  her  mother?  A.  Yes.  Q.  And  then  you 
shot  her?  A.  Yes.  Q.  Where  did  you  shoot  her  first?  A.  I  don't 
know.  Q.  How  many  times  did  you  shoot  her?  A.  Oh,  I  think 
all  seven  times.  Q,  Why  did  you  run  away?  A,  I  was  scared 
of  the  police.  Q.  Why?  Did  you  think  they  would  kill  you? 
A.  No.     Q.  Why  were  you  scared  of  the  police  then?    A.  Afraid 


115 

of  arresting.  Q.  Afraid  of  bcinif  arrested?  A.  Yes.  Q.  You 
wanted  to  get  away?  A.  Yes.  Q.  You  knew  what  you  had  done? 
A.  Yes,  I  knew  what  I  had  done.  Q.  You  knew  that  it  was  wrong 
to  do  that?  A.  Yes.  Q.  And  you  were  running  and  trying  to  get 
away  from  that?  A.  Yes.  Q.  You  didn't  want  to  be  caught? 
A.  No.  Q.  You  knew  that  if  they  caught  you  you  wouUl  be  pun- 
ished? A.  Yes.  Q.  You  knew  you  would  be  punished  for  doing 
wrong,  and  you  knew  you  had  done  something  that  was  wrong? 
A.  Oh,  yes,  sure.  Q.  And  that  was  the  reason  you  were  running 
away?  A.  Yes.  Q.  Don't  you  feel  badly  that  you  killed  this 
girl?    A.  Yes,  but  1  am  satisfied  now  that  I  have. 

There  has  been  no  psychological  test  made  of  Monaco,  and 
so  I  shall  have  to  let  the  story  of  his  crime  and  his  confession 
(as  compared  with  confessions  of  feeble-minded  delinquents) 
indicate  his  mental  status. 


Chapter  XVII 

CONCLUSION 

There  can  be  no  doubt  but  that  sooner  or  later  society  must 
take  an  intelligent  interest  in  defective  and  delinquent  children 
not  only  because  the  defective  and  delinquent  child  is  practically 
certain  to  grow  into  a  criminal,  but  because  defective  stock  re- 
produces its  own  kind.  Of  course  the  union  of  defective  and 
normal  individuals  will  produce  some  normal  offspring  as  well 
as  defective  offspring,  but  even  here  succeeding  generations  will 
show  defective  beings  born  of  apparently  normal  parents. 
Among  individuals  blessed  with  more  sentiment  than  hard  sense 
the  theory  that  good  environment  will  radically  improve  a  de- 
fective strain  is  still  very  common,  but  it  is  inconceivable  that 
anyone  who  professes  to  believe  that  human  beings  can  breed 
in  haphazard  fashion  with  good  results  would  for  an  instant 
contemplate  breeding  a  thoroughbred  horse  with  a  scrub,  or  a 
greyhound  with  a  mongrel,  with  any  hope  of  protecting  the 
progeny  from  deterioration. 

Of  course  the  conditions  of  civilized  society  have  made  the 
ideas  of  personal  freedom  and  the  sanctity  of  life  the  most  im- 
portant subjects  for  human  thought,  but  personal  freedom  in 


116  Why  Some  Men  Kill 

society  involves  a  degree  of  responsibility  and  self-discipline 
which  a  defective  being  cannot  comprehend,  much  less  exercise. 

The  idea  of  the  sanctity  of  human  life  does  not  even  require 
defense  or  discussion  if  we  are  wilUng  to  apply  its  first  prin- 
ciples to  the  question  of  reproduction.  To  grant  whelesale  li- 
cense to  defective  men  and  women  to  propagate  defectives  who 
are  certain  in  many  instances  to  destroy  human  life  as  the  weak- 
minded  beings  whose  life  stories  have  been  told  in  the  preceding 
chapters  have  done,  is  to  disregard  the  sanctity  of  human  life 
instead  of  striving  to  protect  it.  The  sanctity  of  human  life  is 
a  mutual  affair  if  there  is  anything  in  the  idea  at  all.  We  can- 
not guard  the  defectives  alone  from  destruction  and  allow  them 
the  liberty  to  kill  normal  people,  and  in  view  of  that  truth  we 
are  bound  to  segregate  the  dangerous  defectives  and  to  prevent 
all  of  them  so  far  as  possible  from  reproducing  their  kind.  Of 
course  there  will  always  be  a  certain  number  of  the  defectives 
due  to  inherited  syphilis,  alcoholism  in  the  parents  at  the  time 
of  conception,  injuries  at  the  time  of  birth  and  acute  diseases 
in  infancy,  not  to  mention  the  family  strains  where  there  is  an 
inheritance  from  some  defective  ancestor  which  occasionally 
produces  a  defective  child.  This  burden  society  must  always 
carry  just  as  it  must  provide  for  the  crippled,  the  diseased  and 
the  insane,  but  it  is  quite  unnecessary  to  encourage  or  tolerate 
the  certain  reproduction  of  any  defective  stock.  The  kindest 
regard  and  support  of  those  defectives  who  are  here  does  not 
include  encouraging  them  to  become  parents.  That  is  as  foolish 
as  to  propose  wholesale  euthanasia. 

There  will  be  difficulties  in  the  way,  of  course,  in  limiting 
the  reproduction  of  defectives,  but  the  colonization  of  females 
of  the  child  bearing  age  will  undoubtedly  be  the  principal  meth- 
od, for  the  simple  reason  that  a  normal  woman  will  very  rarely 
mate  with  a  feeble-minded  man,  while  there  are  unlimited  num- 
bers of  men  who  will  cohabit  with  feeble-minded  women.  Then, 
too,  sterilization  of  the  feeble-minded  male  is  a  very  simple 
operation.  A  number  of  states  have  sterilization  laws  for  indi- 
viduals in  prisons  and  other  state  institutions,  but  while  some 
of  these  laws  have  been  decided  to  be  unconstitutional  for  the 
obvious  reason  that  such  a  law  is  class  legislation,  still  if  such 
a  law  were  made  generally  applicable  to  males  at  least  it  would 
not  be  open  to  that  objection. 

As  I  have  said  in  a  previous  chapter,  not  all  the  defectives 
have  strong  criminal  tendencies,  but  many  of  them   do  have 


117 

such  inclination  and  they  usually  appear  in  the  adolescent  years, 
not  perhaps  as  criminal  acts  but  as  tendencies  which  are  bound 
to  grow.  Very  little  can  be  done  to  check  them  because  a  weak- 
mind  offers  no  foundation  on  which  to  build  character,  though 
such  a  mind  may  and  often  does  know  the  difference  between 
right  and  wrong. 

This  knowledge  of  right  and  wrong  combined  as  it  is  in  the 
weak-minded  with  lack  of  ability  to  deal  in  abstractions  and  the 
consequent  inability  to  foresee  consequences  together  with  an 
almost  utter  lack  of  power  of  inhibition  or  self-control  forms 
the  great  stumbling  block  for  the  public  in  understanding  and 
dealing  with  the  feeble-minded  criminal.  It  has  been  the  iron- 
clad custom  for  hundreds  of  generations  to  hold  the  individual 
responsible  for  his  conduct  when  he  knows  the  difference  be- 
tween right  and  wrong,  and  this  custom  may  be  said  to  be  the 
foundation  principle  of  the  criminal  law  in  all  countries.  The 
principle  is  perfectly  sound  of  course  for  all  normal  persons, 
but  it  has  been  recognized  by  the  courts  that  it  does  not  apply  to 
insane  persons  for  obvious  reasons.  In  the  case  of  Jean  Gianini, 
reported  by  Dr.  Goddard  in  his  "Criminal  Imbecile,"  it  was 
recognized  by  the  court  that  Jean  was  a  high-grade  defective 
and  that  his  rudimentary  knowledge  of  right  and  wrong  did  not 
make  him  morally  responsible  for  his  acts,  though  the  necessity 
of  permanently  confining  him  was  recognized  and  acted  upon. 

At  the  trial  of  Guiteau  for  the  assassination  of  President  Gar- 
field insanity  was  made  the  defense.  The  experts  differed  wide- 
ly, as  usual,  and  Judge  Cox  in  his  charge  to  the  jury  laid  down 
the  principle  that  if  it  was  apparent  in  view  of  all  the  testimony, 
including  of  course  that  of  the  alienists,  that  Guiteau  knew  the 
difference  between  right  and  wrong  that  the  jury  should  hold 
him  responsible  for  his  criminal  act  and  should  find  him  guilty 
of  murder  in  the  first  degree.  The  jury  did  so  find,  and  in  view 
of  public  opinion  it  could  not  have  done  anything  else.  Indeed, 
so  deeply  is  this  idea  of  moral  responsibility  held  to  apply  to 
any  human  being  who  has  any  intelligence  at  all,  and  by  that 
I  mean  the  average  intelligence  of  a  child  of  say  seven  years, 
that  it  is  a  matter  of  policy  to  convict  paranoiacs  or  imbeciles, 
as  the  legal  term  has  it,  who  present  no  violent  or  obtrusive  symp- 
toms for  the  jury  to  witness,  where  the  evidence  shows  that  the 
individual  has  committed  a  crime.  So  far  as  the  individual  is 
concerned  it  may  not  make  much  difference  to  society,  but  the 
alternative  logical  application  of  the  principle  to  other  defective 


118  Why  Some  Men  Kill 

persons  is  tragic  in  its  consequences,  for  they  ar€  allowed  to  go 
their  ways  and  given  opportunities  to  commit  terrible  crimes, 
and  to  reproduce  their  own  kind. 

This  system  also  fosters  general  ignorance  of  the  criminal 
capacities  of  the  weak-minded  and  encourages  the  belief  that 
such  persons  are  harmless.  It  is  true  that  some  of  them  are 
harmless,  but  the  preceding  chapters  show  what  terrible  crimes 
are  committed  by  the  high-grade  defectives  and  how  because  of 
their  reputation  as  harmless  beings  innocent  persons  may  be 
convicted  of  murder  and  their  lives  practically  destroyed. 

This  is  the  direct  outcome  of  popular  ignorance  on  the  sub- 
ject, which  is  fostered  and  maintained  by  the  courts  and  prose- 
cuting attorneys  partly  through  ignorance  and  partly  through 
slavish  obedience  to  custom.  One  of  the  worst  consequences  of 
this  attitude  of  the  courts  and  prosecuting  officers  is  the  effect 
on  sheriffs,  police  officers  and  detectives  whose  business  it  is  to 
discover  the  perpetrators  of  crime.  They  are  selected  somewhat 
at  random  and  given  the  power  of  the  state  to  pursue  and  arrest 
criminals,  but  it  is  beyond  the  bounds  of  reason  to  expect  un- 
trained minds  to  understand  the  criminal  capabilities  of  such 
delinquent  defectives  as  John  Sierks,  William  Riggin  and  others 
described  in  this  volume.  Unless  there  is  direct  evidence  of 
such  a  feeble-mind  committing  a  crime,  the  detectives  in  cases 
where  there  is  only  circumstantial  evidence,  would  be  the  first 
to  eliminate  the  weak-minded  persons  as  beyond  suspicion.  The 
more  horrible  and  apparently  unprovoked  the  crime  the  less 
they  would  be  disposed  to  suspect  a  member  of  an  unfortunate 
class  Avho  have  been  known  as  "innocents,"  "half-wits,"  "natu- 
rals," "simple-minded,"  "fools"  and  other  names  indicating  their 
weakness  of  mind.  At  the  same  time  the  officers  argue  that  as 
a  crime  has  been  committed  somebody  must  have  committed  it, 
and  in  the  absence  of  any  legitimate  clue  suspicion  is  certain  to 
be  raised  against  some  person  within  reach  by  soine  ill-natured 
gossip  or  by  some  interested  person,  as  in  the  case  of  the  Wehr- 
man  murder. 

Our  system  of  detection  and  punishment  of  crime  is  not  only 
based  on  very  incomplete  knowledge  of  the  subject  but  through 
t)ur  system  of  election  and  appointment  of  officers  of  the  law 
it  becomes  in  part  a  matter  of  politics,  which  means  that  if  a 
terrible  crime  is  committed  our  politically  selected  officers  must 
find  somebody  to  punish  for  it  or  they  will  go  out  of  office  at 
the  next  election.    In  cases  where  there  is  no  direct  evidence  the 


Conclusion  llO 

only  thing  to  do  is  after  a  man  is  lonnd  who  was  mar  onough 
to  the  scene  of  the  crime  to  have  made  it  ])hysically  possible  for 
him  to  have  done  it,  and  who  cannot  establish  an  alibi,  to  raise 
the  hue  and  cry,  as  was  done  in  the  case  of  Arthur  Pender,  by 
saying  that  as  a  soldier  in  the  Philippines  he  killed  Filipino 
girls.  This  was  justified  on  the  ground  that  somebody  killed 
Mrs.  Wehrman,  and  Mr.  Pender  lived  only  a  mile  away,  and  as 
there  was  no  evidence  that  anybody  else  did  it  he  must  have  been 
the  murderer.  The  weight  and  influence  of  official  proceedings 
convinces  the  public  through  the  newspapers  that  probably  the 
man  who  has  been  arrested  by  the  sheriff  is  the  guilty  one. 

In  the  case  of  Arthur  Pender  by  means  of  an  industrious 
propaganda  he  was  made  out  a  perverted  brute,  and  the  detective 
who  secured  his  conviction  was  paid  by  the  county  where  the 
murder  was  committed,  though  he  was  not  paid  as  much  as 
the  sheriff  wished  to  have  him  paid.  The  sheriff  was  in  serious 
trouble  himself  on  account  of  charges  affecting  his  honesty  as 
an  official,  and  he  needed  some  sort  of  vindication  badly,  while 
the  public  wanted  somebody  punished  for  this  terrible  double 
murder. 

If  district  attorneys  had  the  power  to  direct  criminal  investi- 
gations there  would  probably  have  been  a  different  sort  of  an 
investigation  of  the  Wehrman  murder,  but  the  district  attorney 
had  to  take  what  the  sheriff  furnished  him.  He  also  was  in  a 
difficult  situation,  for  the  Wehrman  murder  was  committed  only 
three  months  after  the  sadistic  murder  of  the  four  members  of 
the  Hill  family,  and  that  murder  occurred  in  his  district  and 
he  had  resolutely  stood  against  the  prosecution  of  an  innocent 
man  who  happened  to  be  a  neighbor  of  the  Hills.  To  the  disin- 
terested observer  it  was  apparent  that  the  district  attorney  must 
take  the  sherifrs  evidence  and  fight  to  convict  Arthur  Pender 
or  retire  from  public  life. 

The  district  attorney  did  not  retire  from  public  life.  He 
did  accept  the  evidence  furnished  by  the  sheriff  and  the  detec- 
tive hired  by  the  sheriff  and  he  succeeded  in  convicting  Mr. 
Pender  of  murder  in  the  first  degree  two  years  after  the  crime 
was  committed  on  the  extremely  flimsy  circumstantial  evidence 
which  was  offered  and  the  court  imposed  the  death  sentence  by 
hanging. 

THE  governor's  ATTITUDE 

John  Arthur  Pender  was  taken  to  the  state  penitentiary  to 
be  hanged  in  the  latter  part  of  Governor  Oswald  West's  admin- 


120  Why  Some  Men  Kill 

istration.  Upon  application  made  to  Governor  West  for  pardon 
for  Mr.  Pender  he  commuted  the  sentence  of  hanging  to  hfe  im- 
prisonment. Just  in  the  last  days  of  Governor  West's  adminis- 
tration John  G.  H.  Sierks  confessed  to  the  murder  of  Mrs.  Wehr- 
man  and  her  child,  but  within  three  days  he  repudiated  his  con- 
fession after  hearing  from  his  father  that  the  family  would  go 
away  and  never  see  him  again  as  he  had  disgraced  them.  That 
was  doubtless  the  strongest  appeal  which  could  have  been  made 
to  a  childish  intellect,  and  the  man  with  the  child's  mind  after 
writing  a  frank  letter  to  his  father  (unknown  to  anyone)  in  which 
he  admitted  his  guilt,  decided  the  next  day  to  back  out  of  his 
confession  and  say  it  was  a  "black  lie."  In  this  situation  Gov- 
ernor West  decided  to  pass  the  problem  on  to  his  successor, 
Governor  Withycombe. 

Governor  Withycombe  never  believed  that  John  Arthur  Pen- 
der was  guilty  of  the  murder  of  Mrs.  Wehrman  and  her  child 
and  he  was  greatly  interested  in  the  investigation  which  I  had 
begun  before  he  went  into  office.  In  fact,  he  furnished  about 
$200  for  expense  money  for  the  investigation  of  clues  which 
were  furnished  by  John  Sierks  in  his  confession.  In  the  Spring 
of  1916  the  facts  were  all  verified  apparently  to  Governor  Withy- 
combe's  satisfaction,  but  to  further  satisfy  himself  he  appointed 
Mr.  Richard  C.  Lee,  a  former  newspaper  man  of  high  standing 
and  intelligence,  to  make  an  independent  investigation.  Mr.  Lee 
went  over  the  ground  and  interviewed  all  the  witnesses  whom 
he  could  find  and  talked  to  the  judges  who  presided  at  the  trials. 
He  also  read  all  the  evidence  from  that  at  the  coroner's  inquest 
and  the  preliminary  hearing  to  the  second  trial.  His  conclusion 
in  his  report  to  Governor  Withycombe  was  that  it  was  absurd 
to  claim  that  Mr.  Pender  had  any  connection  with  the  murder 
except  that  he  lived  about  a  mile  from  where  it  happened.  Mr. 
Lee  says  that  his  report  contains  some  curious  facts.  One  was 
that  Judge  Campbell,  who  tried  the  case  the  first  time  (when 
the  jury  disagreed)  said  to  him  that  he  decided  if  the  jury 
brought  in  a  verdict  of  guilty  to  set  aside  the  verdict. 

In  the  matter  of  the  murder  of  William  Booth  in  1915  and 
the  confession  of  the  crime  by  William  Riggin  in  the  spring  of 
1917,  Governor  Withycombe,  upon  my  pointing  out  to  him  the 
possibility  that  the  confession  was  true  in  view  of  the  fact  that 
the  evidence  against  William  Branson  and  Mrs.  Anna  Booth  was 
purely  circumstantial,  gave  the  warden  of  the  penitentiary  in- 
structions to  make  an  investigation  of  all  the  facts  of  Biggin's 


Conclusion  121 

confession.  Warden  Murphy  invited  me  to  join  with  him  in 
this  investigation  and  I  was  ghid  lo  do  so.  A  detailed  report 
was  presented  to  Governor  Withycombe  on  December  1,  1917, 
by  me,  and  the  report  of  Warden  Murphy  was  presented  to  the 
Governor  four  months  earher. 

District  Attorney  Conner,  who  convicted  Wilham  Branson, 
and  who  agreed  to  consent  to  a  pardon  for  Mrs.  Booth  in  a 
year's  time  if  she  would  plead  guilty  to  manslaughter,  made  a 
most  positive  protest  against  a  pardon  for  William  Branson  and 
Anna  Booth.  Mr.  Conner  was  elected  in  a  three-cornered  fight 
by  a  narrow  majority,  and  this  murder  trial  was  the  big  event 
of  his  term  of  office  and  incidentally  it  cost  the  county  $11,000. 

Governor  Withycombe  made  a  rule  not  to  grant  pardons 
without  the  consent  of  the  prosecuting  attorneys.  The  Governor 
is  required  by  law  before  granting  pardons  to  inquire  of  the 
judge  or  district  attorney  concerning  the  case,  but  of  course  he 
is  under  no  obligation  to  follow  the  suggestion  of  either.  He 
has  absolute  power  under  the  constitution  to  pardon  any  person 
convicted  of  crime,  and  in  fact  this  is  the  only  method  provided 
by  which  a  person  unjustly  convicted  of  crime  may  be  saved 
from  an  unjust  fate. 

In  the  matter  of  the  pardons  of  John  Arthur  Pender  and  of 
William  Branson  and  Anna  Booth  the  Federation  of  Women's 
Clubs  in  Portland  appointed  a  committee  in  December,  1918, 
to  intercede  with  the  Governor  for  these  persons  unjustly  con- 
victed of  murder,  but  the  Governor  wrote  the  committee  that  he 
could  do  nothing  in  these  cases  as  the  district  attorneys  who 
had  convicted  these  persons  objected  to  his  taking  any  action. 

This  brings  into  strong  relief  the  political  power  of  the  dis- 
trict attorneys  of  Oregon  and  indicates  the  truth  of  the  remarks 
of  students  from  other  nations  "that  the  American  people  do 
not  govern  themselves,  but  are  ruled  by  a  class  of  men  who  are 
known  as  politicians."  However  at  the  last  election  less  than 
50  per  cent  of  the  voters  went  to  the  polls  in  Oregon,  so  perhaps 
the  voters  prefer  that  the  politicians  should  rule. 

In  the  matter  of  the  Hill  murder,  the  district  attorney  of 
Clackamas  County,  who  by  the  way  is  a  very  different  person 
from  the  district  attorney  who  refused  to  prosecute  (in  effect) 
a  neighbor  of  the  Hills,  has  treated  the  information  which  I  have 
furnished  him  with  the  most  profound  contempt  and  has  abso- 
lutely refused  to  investigate  for  himself.  It  is  true  that  he  made 
a  contract  with  a  consideration  of  $2000  with  the  private  de- 


Why  Some  Men  Kill 

tective  who  was  hired  by  the  sheriff  who  collected  the  evidence 
against  Mr.  Pender  in  the  Wehrman  murder,  to  secure  the  evi- 
dence in  the  Hill  murder.  However,  Clackamas  County  refused 
to  pay  the  $2000,  and  the  detective  had  to  enforce  collection 
by  a  suit  in  court  which  he  won.  It  is  also  true  that  the  district 
attorney  has  never  attempted  to  use  this  evidence,  which  cost  so 
much,  in  any  prosecution. 

In  the  Hill  murder  case,  William  Riggin,  who  confessed,  is 
in  the  penitentiary  but  is  eligible  for  release,  and  one  of  his 
alleged  accomplices  was  living  in  the  woods  in  a  suburb  of  Port- 
land in  February  of  1919.  Riggin's  term  will  expire  in  a  year  or 
two  and  he  will  be  free  to  "get"  one  other  man  whom  he  has 
threatened. 

The  practical  thing  for  consideration  in  these  three  murder 
cases  involving  the  destruction  of  the  lives  of  seven  people,  is 
that  out  of  all  the  warring  influences  and  bitter  personalities 
sufficient  interest  has  been  aroused  to  actually  secure  careful 
investigations  of  the  murders,  and  it  undoubtedly  now  rests  with 
the  general  public  to  say  whether  the  three  innocent  persons 
in  the  penitentiary  who  were  wrongfullj'^  convicted  shall  be  re- 
leased in  the  name  of  common  justice,  and  whether  the  defective 
and  criminal  beings  who  killed  the  Hill  family  shall  be  permitted 
to  go  at  large. 

This  volume  was  prepared  for  this  purpose,  and  for  the  in- 
finitely larger  purpose  of  bringing  the  question  of  the  criminal 
tendencies  of  high-grade  feeble-minded  men  before  the  public 
in  order  that  sensible  measures  may  be  considered  for  limiting 
the  procreation  of  feeble-minded  stock. 

The  End. 


APPENDIX  A 
CONFESSION  OF  WILLIAM  RIGGIN 

"I,  WilHam  Riggin,  under  oath,  do  make  this  my  true  and 
voluntary  statement,  to-wit:  Rranson  and  Mrs.  Rooth  are  not 
guilty  of  kilHng  Rooth.  I  shot  William  Rooth;  Rooth  always 
had  it  in  for  me,  and  one  time  called  me  out  of  the  poolhall  in 


Willainina  aiui  told  mo  thai  I  had  a  bad  nanu-;  said  lor  mc  to 
leave  his  wife  alone.  1  told  him,  "To  hell  with  him."  He  slapi)ed 
me  one  the  side  of  the  head.  Another  lime  I  was  standing  on 
a  street  in  Willamina  and  Booth  eame  along  and  said  to  the 
other  fellow  he  was  with,  "There  is  a  con." 

"He  always  had  it  in  for  me.  I  said  to  myself  that  1  was 
going  to  get  him.  I  think  he  tipped  me  off  to  the  (lame  Warden. 
He  always  kept  j)icking  at  me.  On  October  7,  in  the  forenoon, 
I  went  down  past  Dud  Lee's  place  and  got  to  talking  with  him 
about  Booth.  He  knew  that  Mrs.  Booth  and  Branson  wer(>  going 
together  and  that  Booth  was  jealous.  He  told  me  that  Booth 
was  going  up  in  there  all  the  time,  trailing  Billy  Branson.  Booth 
watched  me  like  a  hawk  and  was  jealous  of  me. 

THREE    SHOTS    FIRED 

"On  October  8,  in  the  morning,  I  took  a  .32-20  rifle  and  a  .38 
Smith  and  Wesson  hammerless  revolver,  blue  steel,  and  went 
up  to  the  timber  to  practice  shooting  and  wait  for  Booth.  1  had 
a  lot  of  mixed  sheHs  for  the  .38;  some  hand-loaded  and  some 
were  not.  I  practiced  shooting  for  about  two  hours;  1  did  not 
expect  to  find  Booth;  I  came  down  the  road  and  saw  Billy 
Branson  and  Mrs.  Booth  talking  together;  when  I  passed  them 
they  were  off  at  the  edge  of  the  road  just  a  few  feet  from  the 
edge  of  the  road;  they  did  not  see  me,  or  did  not  let  on  that 
they  saw  me. 

"I  don't  know  that  they  saw  me.  I  passed  them  and  went 
down  the  road  for  about  200  yards  and  circled  around  and  came 
back.  I  circled  around  to  the  left.  I  was  about  40  yards  from 
them.  There  was  some  brush  and  timber  between  me  and  them, 
I  stood  there  and  watched  them.  I  saw  Booth  coming  across  the 
field  to  the  left  of  me,  and  when  he  was  about  100  yards  off  I 
shot  at  him  with  the  rifle.  He  stopped  and  looked  around  and 
i  ducked  down  on  the  ground.  He  came  on  across  and  I  waited 
until  he  got  to  about  30  yards  from  me  and  I  shot  him  with  the 
revolver.  After  I  shot  he  partly  turned  around  and  fell  kind  of 
on  his  left  side.  He  said  'Oh,  my  God.'  I  shot  at  him  again 
and  when  he  was  on  the  ground,  but  I  think  I  missed  him. 

ESCAPE  IS  EXPLAINED 

"I  would  have  shot  all  the  shells  at  him,  but  I  was  afraid 
someone  would  see  me.  I  lit  out  to  the  left  and  went  down 
through  the  brush.  I  walked  to  a  vacant  shed  near  Willamina 
where  I  had  a  horse  that  1  hired  from  a  stable  in  McMinnville, 
got  on  the  horse  and  beat  it.  The  shed  is  near  an  old  sawmill 
at  the  edge  of  Willamina.  It  was  a  spotted  pony  with  roached 
mane.  I  rode  out  through  (iopher  Valley  and  past  Baker  Creek 
Falls  and  passed  Jerry  Funk's  place  to  Walker  Flat.  I  took  the 
horse  into  McMinnville  and  turned  him  loose  in  the  stable,  but 
not  the  stable  tliat  I  hired  him  from.  I  got  the  horse  out  of  the 
Red  Front  barn  and  turned  him  loose  in  the  barn  below  the 
Commercial  Hotel.  There  was  no  one  in  the  barn.  I  rode  right 
in  the  barn  and  jerked  the  bridle  off  him  and  loosened  the  saddle 
and  put  him  in  the  stall  and  left.    I  walked  back  to  Walker  Flat 


and  stayed  for  three  days  with  a  man  who  was  making  boards 
and  posts.  I  went  on  over  to  Tillamook  and  ditched  the  revolver 
and  belt  at  Pinkey  Stillwell's  place  on  the  road  to  Tillamook. 
I  put  the  revolver  inside  the  picket  fence.  At  the  time  the  shoot- 
ing took  place  I  wore  a  blue  shirt,  corduroy  pants  and  high-top 
corked  shoes.  William  Riggin." 


APPENDIX  B 
CONFESSION  OF  JOHN  G.  H.  SIERKS 

"I,  John  G.  H.  Sierks,  say  that  on  Labor  Day,  September  4, 
1911,  I  had  been  drinking  with  some  men  on  the  farm  of  J.  L. 
Smith,  about  five  miles  from  Hillsboro,  and  went  to  bed  about 
seven  o'clock;  then  got  up  about  seven  thirty  and  walked  over 
to  Allavatch,  a  station  on  the  United  Railways,  and  took  the 
Electric  car  for  Burlington.  There  I  got  off  and  stole  a  speeder 
from  the  Burlington  car  shop  section  boss  and  went  down  to 
Scappoose  on  the  Northern  Pacific  line,  there  crossed  over  and 
went  on  the  logging  road  which  crossed  over  to  this  woman's 
place — crossed  at  Parson's  Station.  There  I  ditched  it  and  went 
over  and  stole  a  revolver  out  of  a  trunk  in  Hasson  and  Riley's 
cabin,  broke  it  open  with  a  claw  hammer  in  Hasson  and  Riley's 
cabin.  This  claw  hammer  had  only  one  claw.  1  took  this  claw 
hammer  and  threw  it  in  Pender's  tent,  then  went  up  to  this 
woman's  cabin.  I  found  Mrs.  Wehrman  coming  from  the  house 
with  a  lantern — this  was  about  ten  o'clock.    I  saw  her  go  in  the 

house  and  asked  her  for  and  she  objected  and  spoke  to 

me  harshly.  She  went  into  the  house  and  got  a  gun  and  shot 
at  me.  The  bullet  went  into  the  cabin  at  the  right  hand  of  me 
as  I  went  in.  I  pulled  out  my  revolver  from  my  hip  pocket  and 
fired  three  shots  at  her.  I  fired  one  shot  at  her  from  a  distance 
and  she  fell  and  then  I  placed  the  gun  close  to  her  forehead  and 
fired;  I  then  placed  it  on  her  chest  and  fired  again.  The  boy 
was  lying  in  bed  with  his  clothes  on.  I  thought  he  would  wake 
up  and  squeal  on  me  so  I  fired  at  him.  I  placed  the  gun  close 
to  his  head  and  fired  two  shots.  I  found  a  hatchet  in  the  wood 
box  and  chopped  and  split  her  skull.  I  went  over  and  took  her 
drawers  off,  then  I  ravished  her.  1  was  afraid  someone  would 
catch  me.  I  ran  out  and  washed  my  hands  in  a  basin  on  the 
porch;  the  towel  was  hanging  by  the  door  and  I  wiped  my  hands 
on  it.  Then  I  padlocked  the  door.  I  took  the  key  and  throwed 
it  away,  then  I  took  the  gun  back  to  Riley  and  Hasson's  cabin 
and  put  it  in  the  trunk.  The  gun  I  took  from  Mrs.  Wehrman  I 
buried  in  the  edge  of  the  garden.  Then  I  went  down  where  my 
car  was,  put  it  on  the  track  and  rode  to  Burlington;  then  I  took 
the  midnight  out  from  Burlington  to  Allavatch  Station.  1  got 
home  about  four  o'clock  in  the  morning.  I  went  to  bed.  1  got 
up  about  six  o'clock  that  morning  and  went  to  work  shocking 
grain.  My  mother  and  I  talked  this  over  but  I  refused  to  say 
anything  about  it.     She  believed  that  I  did  it. 

John  G.  H.  Sierks." 


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